Preamble

The House met at Half-past Two o'Clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

MUTINY. MALAYA (SENTENCES)

Mr. Ivor Owen Thomas: I beg leave to present a Petition signed by 2,032 people in my constituency protesting against the sentences passed by court martial on the 243 men of the 13th Parachute Battalion, South East Asia Command, in Malaya, including Private E. Poulter, of Hadley, Shropshire, and requesting that the sentences be quashed.

Petition to lie upon the Table.

Oral Answers to Questions — ALIENS

Soviet Citizens (British Subjects)

Major Tufton Beamish: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many British citizens were granted Soviet citizenship each year since the Russian Revolution; how many are living in Russia today; and whether he will take steps to assist such men and women who wish to become British citizens again to do so.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Ede): The information asked for in the first two parts of the Question is not available, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is making inquiry of the Russian authorities, who alone are in a position to furnish this information. As regards the last part of the Question, it is not possible under our law to naturalise persons of British origin residing abroad

who have acquired a foreign nationality and do not possess the necessary qualifications of residence in this country.

Personal Case

Mr. Benn Levy: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will reconsider the case, to which his attention has been called by the hon. Member for Eton and Slough, of a young woman who, having served four years in the A.T.S., is now, together with her British baby, separated by immigration regulations from her husband who served in the British Army, was for four years a prisoner of war in Germany, and is now serving as a Government welfare officer in Palestine but has been refused permission to join his wife and child in this country.

Mr. Ede: In this case the husband, who was of German nationality, settled in Palestine in 1934. In 1945, while he was temporarily in England, he married before returning to Palestine, a woman who was of Austrian nationality, and she, I understand, is unwilling to go to Palestine to join her husband. I cannot regard the birth of a baby in British territory as a reason in itself for allowing the father to settle here, and should only feel justified in agreeing to his admission if he can obtain an offer of employment here and the Ministry of Labour were prepared to grant a permit.

Mr. Levy: At a time when thousands of willing immigrants are being refused admission to Palestine, is it good sense to exert pressure on unwilling immigrants to go and live there? Moreover, is it creditable to this country that we should avail ourselves of the services of such people as these in our hour of danger, and then lock our doors on them when the danger is over?

Mr. Ede: The answer to the first part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question is that that is not what is happening. Nor is what my hon. Friend has said, in the second part of his supplementary question, a fair comment on the situation.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: Can my right hon. Friend say whether it is the policy of His Majesty's Government that if a Jew wants to go to Palestine he cannot, and if he wants to come out he cannot do that either?

Mr. Ede: No, Sir. I have said in my answer that if this man can obtain an offer of employment in this country, and the Ministry of Labour are willing for him to take it, I shall be perfectly willing to admit him; neither of the principals in this matter is a British subject at the moment.

Oral Answers to Questions — POLICE

Pay

Mr. Martin Lindsay: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he now contemplates increasing the pay of the police.

Sir Ian Fraser: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the present pay of the Metropolitan Police and of the police generally throughout the country; and if he contemplates any change in the rates.

Mr. Ede: The pay of a constable is on a scale commencing at 90s. a week (or 88s. a week for men under 23 years of age) and rising to 117s. a week or 123s. in the case of men granted additional long service increments. These rates were introduced in March, 1945, on the understanding that they would not be modified for at least three years, but representations have recently been made by the Police Federation Joint Central Committees that the scale should now be improved. These representations have been circulated to members of the police councils with whom the matter will be discussed at meetings to be held at the end of this month.

Mr. W. J. Brown: In addition to giving, I trust, sympathetic consideration to the wages position in the police force, would the Minister now consider raising the ban upon the police having their own organisation to deal with these issues which may arise?

Mr. Ede: I do not think that arises out of the Questions that I have answered. Undoubtedly, that, and other matters with regard to the organisation of the police force, will have to be considered in the very near future.

Sir Patrick Hannon: Would the Home Secretary take into consideration the fact that of all the public servants in this country the police are the most devoted,

and will he not give most careful consideration to any suggestion made for improving their conditions?

Mr. Ede: I think it would be very wrong of me, with the police councils considering this matter at the end of the month, to say anything today that would appear to give a lead one way or the other; but I do thank the hon. Member for the testimonial he has paid to the police force.

Mr. Hector Hughes: In assessing these rates of pay, does the Minister take into account the changes from time to time in the cost of living?

Mr. Ede: That again is a matter for the police councils to consider when they meet at the end of the month.

Captain John Crowder: Will the Minister give consideration to the increase in the cost of living in the Greater London area? It is more expensive to live in London than in a provincial town.

Mr. Ede: I think it would be very wrong of me, with the police councils meeting at the end of the month, to give any indication of my personal views. I shall receive their advice, and in the light of that advice I shall have to make up my mind what, if any, changes I shall have to recommend

Squatters

Mr. Quintin Hogg: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department on whose instructions the police failed to resist forcible entry at Fountain Court, of which they had been given prior warning, and what is the reason for the change of policy now shown.

Mr. Ede: There was no evidence that the original party of squatters at Fountain Court, of whose arrival the police had not been warned, entered by force, and the police on the spot acted on the view that the arrival of others to join the party already in possession did not constitute forcible entry. Later the Commissioner of Police issued an instruction to his officers to prevent any future misapprehension.

Mr. Hogg: Is it not a fact that much of the inconvenience and distress which this episode caused was originally occasioned by the impression that the authorities were favourable to this movement, and that the change only took place after a crisis had


arisen? Will the right hon. Gentleman be sure in future that the attitude of the Government is made plain before an anticipated breach of the law?

Mr. Ede: It is well known that the policy of His Majesty's Government is against all breaches of the law, whether anticipated or otherwise. In this case, no notice was given by the persons intending to commit a breach of the law that they meant to do it.

Mr. Keeling: Do I understand the Home Secretary to deny the statement which was made several weeks ago by the chairman of the housing committee of the Westminster City Council that the police were informed in advance of the intention to squat?

Mr. Ede: I am informed, with regard to the particular case brought to my notice in this Question by the hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg), that the police had no prior notice.

Mr. S. Silverman: If the Government get into any further difficulty about these illegal immigrants looking for a home, might they not consult General Barker in Palestine?

Mr. Derek Walker-Smith: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what instructions were given to the police after the initial occupation of Army hutted camps in respect of possible attempts to occupy requisitioned or private properties temporarily standing empty.

Mr. Ede: I have no authority to issue instructions to the police as to the measures they should take for the prevention of unlawful acts, and I am not normally informed of the instructions issued by chief constables to their forces. In the Metropolitan Police district the police were instructed by the Commissioner of Police on 10th September to do everything possible to prevent further forcible entry by squatters, and in view of the possibility that the tactics used in London might be copied by squatters in the provinces I drew the attention of chief constables to the action taken in London and to the importance of preventing forcible entry.

Mr. Walker-Smith: While appreciating the Home Secretary's point as to instruc-

tions, may I ask if he does not consider that it would have been helpful on his part to have given advice to chief constables and police authorities after the initial occupation of Army huts, in order to forestall the difficulty which in fact arose by the occupation of requisitioned and private properties?

Mr. Ede: No, Sir There was no reason at that time to anticipate that the second and organised effort on these lines would take place. When it appeared likely that there might be a spread of this, I did issue a circular giving advice. Beyond that, I am not entitled to go.

CINEMAS (SUNDAY OPENING)

Mr. Peter Freeman: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department in how many cases a poll has been taken under the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, which has resulted in favour of Sunday opening of cinemas in reversal of the vote taken on the preceding town meeting; in how many cases where public polls have declared in favour of Sunday opening have His Majesty's Government refused to grant the draft order; and the extent to which cinematograph shows given by churches and clubs on Sundays are subject to police inspection.

Mr. Ede: Since the passing of the Act of 1932, there have been 116 draft Orders submitted by borough and urban district councils. As regards 79 of them, a public meeting vote against Sunday opening was reversed by a poll. The decision whether such draft Orders shall be confirmed rests not with the Government but with Parliament. In one case only has Parliament refused confirmation. All exhibitions involving the use of inflammable films, to which the public are admitted, are subject to inspection under the Cinematograph Act, 1909. Most licensing authorities take the view that the Act does not apply to exhibitions of sub-standard films which are, I understand, the kind more commonly shown in churches and clubs.

TRAVEL IDENTITY CARDS (NORTHERN IRELAND)

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department under what authority, and for what purpose, officials of his Department in-


sist upon production of passports or other documents by persons travelling from England to Ulster and vice versa.

Mr. Ede: The authority is contained in the Aliens Restriction Acts and in the Emergency Laws (Transitional Provisions) Act which continued Defence Regulation 18. The purpose of requiring British subjects who are normally resident in Great Britain or Northern Ireland to carry either travel identity cards or passports is to enable them to be distinguished at sight from other passengers and passed through the control without delay. I am glad to be able to announce the abolition of the fee for the issue of travel identity cards. On and after Monday next, 14th October, these cards will be issued free in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Sir Ronald Ross: Will the right hon. Gentleman use his influence with the parties concerned to expedite the issue of the cards when applied for, because it still takes a very long time?

Mr. Ede: I will have that point looked into. I had hoped that improvements had been effected and, in fact, on occasions I have received letters indicating that that is so.

AIR RAID SHELTERS (REMOVAL)

Mr. Wyatt: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will take steps in the near future, to have removed the surface air-raid shelters in the Aston division of Birmingham, which are at present being used in ways detrimental to the public interest.

Mr. Ede: The local authority have already demolished the surface shelters in the busier streets, and are now negotiating contracts for the removal of all other surface shelters which in their view are a source of serious public nuisance. If my hon. Friend has any particular shelters in mind, perhaps he would be good enough to inform the corporation of the details in the first instance.

SUSPECTED MAN'S PHOTOGRAPH (PUBLICATION)

Mr. Norman Bower: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is aware of the public anxiety occasioned by the fact that the police re-

quested the Press to refrain from publishing a photograph of Neville George Clevely Heath, although they were convinced that he was the murderer of Mrs. Margery Gardner; and if he has any statement to make.

Mr. Ede: When the Metropolitan Police first requested the Press to refrain from publishing a photograph of Heath there was no definite evidence that he was the murderer of Mrs. Gardner. A description of Heath had been circulated to all police stations in London within 14 hours of the discovery of the body, and a taxi-driver had come forward who thought he could identify the man whom he had driven with Mrs. Gardner to the Pem-bridge Court Hotel on the night of the crime. It was evident that if a charge of murder could be brought against Heath, the taxi-driver's evidence would be vital to the success of the prosecution and that if in the meantime Heath's photograph was published in the Press it might enable the defence to. throw doubt upon the evidence of identification. The circumstances of the murder of Mrs. Gardner did not afford any reason to suppose that her assailant would commit a second murder, and I am satisfied that the police were right in asking that the Press should not take a course which might have prejudiced the due course of justice.
I desire to express to the parents and friends of Heath's second victim, Miss Marshall, sincere sympathy in their tragic loss.

Mr. Bower: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for that reply, may I ask if he can give an assurance that, in such cases, the police are not actuated by any undue solicitude for the feelings of suspects who may subsequently turn out to be not guilty?

Mr. Ede: No, Sir. I am quite sure that they have no such feelings. It is their duty to see that persons are not unnecessarily brought under suspicion, and, at the same time, to take every step to ensure that, when they do present a case to the court, they shall not, by their own actions, have cast doubt upon the evidence which they have to bring forward.

Mr. McGovern: May I ask the Home Secretary why, when some newspapers very definitely stated that there was evi-


dence and that the police were convinced that Heath was the murderer of Mrs. Gardner, at that time that photograph was not published; and can he state why the Home Office did not issue a disclaimer regarding that statement in the Press, which must have caused great distress and suffering to the parents when it was stated that the second death could have been avoided?

Mr. Ede: It would be quite impossible for my Department or any other to undertake to deny wrong statements that are issued in the Press. I am grateful to the hon. Member who put down the Question, thus enabling me to make a clear statement on this issue.

PENSIONS APPEALS

Lieut.-Commander Clark Hutchison: asked the Minister of Pensions whether he will reconsider his decision in regard to the findings of the special Arbitration Tribunal and allow an appeal on a point of law to the High Court in England and Court of Session in Scotland.

The Minister of Pensions (Mr. Wilfred Paling): The decision that references to the special Arbitration Tribunal should be on the basis that both the appellant and the Ministry will accept its finding as final and conclusive was reached after full consideration of all the circumstances, and I can find no grounds for departing from this decision.

Lieut.-Commander Hutchison: Does the right hon. Gentleman not consider it highly undesirable that access to the High Courts should be denied to an individual?

Mr. Paling: Access to the High Court was there on the first occasion. This was rather a particular occasion created to meet a special difficulty.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING

Syston, Leicestershire

Mr. Anthony Nutting: asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware that Syston Parish Council, Leicestershire, have received about 130 applications for housing accommodation, but see no prospect of any permanent houses being built this year; and what steps he intends to take to remedy this position.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Aneurin Bevan): Contracts have been let for 66 permanent houses on two sites in Syston parish, and I understand that it is hoped that 40 will be completed by the end of the year. Work on 34 temporary houses is also about to be commenced. My Department will give all possible help to expedite the completion of these schemes.

Mr. Nutting: Can the Minister say how many he hopes to complete before the end of the year and how many will be built by private enterprise?

Mr. Bevan: That information has not been asked for. The hon. Member has already stated the position quite inaccurately in his Question, and he may put down another Question with similar inaccuracy.

Agricultural Workers

Mr. Walker-Smith: asked the Minister of Health what proportion of the houses now being erected by rural district councils he anticipates will be occupied by agricultural workers; and what steps he proposes to take to ensure that a reasonable share of these houses will be reserved for agricultural workers.

Mr. Bevan: I do not possess data to enable a forecast to be made of actual numbers, but the provision which has been made by the Government in the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act for the payment of a special rate of subsidy for houses for agricultural workers will, I think, secure the object desired, the need for which is, I am satisfied, appreciated by rural district councils.

Flats (Requisitioning)

Mr. Wyatt: asked the Minister of Health whether he will consider obtaining special powers to requisition blocks of flats now standing empty, and which could be used to relieve the housing shortage, in cases where local councils are unwilling to use their own requisitioning powers.

Mr. Bevan: I have already sufficient powers for requisitioning premises of the kind referred to by my hon. Friend. I have delegated them to the clerks of local authorities since those authorities are the best judges of the housing needs in their localities and have the necessary organisation for managing the properties. I am confident that these powers are in


general adequately used, but if my hon. Friend has any particular case in mind I shall be happy to consider it.

Mr. Wyatt: Will my right hon. Friend explain why he did not use these powers in the case of the Duchess of Bedford fiats, which have been offered to the Kensington Town Council for requisitioning purposes and not taken up by them?

Mr. Bevan: I have explained that requisitioning powers are entrusted to the local authorities.

Mr. H. Hynd: What does the Minister propose to do about reactionary local authorities who do not use these powers?

Mr. Bevan: I have already said that, if my hon. Friends will give me cases of local authorities inadequately exercising these powers, I will look into them.

Mr. Piratin: In view of the publicity given to the case of the Duchess of Bedford flats, what does the Minister propose to do?

Mr. Bevan: It does not necessarily follow that the publicity had any basis in fact.

Disused Camps and Huts (Squatters)

Mr. Hogg: asked the Minister of Health what is the policy of the Government in regard to squatters in disused Service huts and camps.

Mr. Peter Freeman: asked the Minister of Health whether he will make a full statement concerning the so-called squatters' camps; how many Army and other camps are now being used for civilian housing accommodation; how many persons, approximately, are being so accommodated; how many camps are being supervised under local government authorities; how many organised as communities with all social activities and communal services; and whether he is satisfied that all suitable sites are now being utilised.

Mr. Bevan: These two Questions raise the same broad issues and, as the answer is rather long, I will, with permission, make a statement at the end of Questions.

Later—

Mr. Bevan: It has for a long time been the policy of the Government to place at the disposal of local housing authorities

camps and huts which are no longer required by the Service Departments or for other Government uses, and are or can be made suitable for housing; purposes; and in January this year my Department issued a circular to local authorities setting out the terms and conditions on which they could take over redundant camps and make any necessary conversions or adaptations. It has to be remembered that many camps although temporarily vacant need, nevertheless, to be retained for Service or other Government uses, and that, even where camps can be made available to local authorities, they may be unsuitable for housing purposes or would require, to make them suitable, an unjustifiable diversion of labour and materials from the national housing programme.
The Government, however sympathetic to the plight of individuals, are bound to condemn the action of squatters in taking unauthorised possession of these premises. In some cases, they have invaded camps which cannot be released for housing purposes. In others they have occupied camps either unsuitable for housing or requiring uneconomical works of conversion and adaptation. Further, where the camps are such as can be suitably taken over by the local housing authorities, the squatters have in many cases jumped the claims of persons higher on the local authorities' lists of applicants for houses. Where squatters have occupied camps which cannot be made available, or are unsuitable for housing, it will be necessary for them to move. Some have already moved of their own accord and for others alternative has been found. It has so far been necessary to institute legal proceedings for eviction only in one case in which it was not possible, after every endeavour had been made, to find alternative accommodation.
Where it has not yet been decided whether the camp can be used for housing, the local housing authority are asked to make all necessary public services available pending determination of the question. Where it is decided that the camp can be offered to the local authority, the authority are invited, in addition to making public services available, to take the camp over in accordance with the circular I have mentioned, or at least to undertake its management as the agent of my Department. Where the local authority take over or undertake to


manage a camp, it is for them to consider whether any steps ought to be taken to displace some or all the squatters in order to accommodate other claimants for housing accommodation having a higher degree of priority. These arrangements apply not only to camps which can be permanently released for housing purposes but also to camps which, although ultimately required by the Services or other Government Departments, can be loaned for 18 months or more to the local authority.
The latest figures to hand indicate that in England and Wales 1,038 camps were in occupation by 39,535 persons. Of this total 145 camps, occupied by 6,175 persons, are required for Service or other Government purposes. In 633 camps occupied by 26,495 persons, emergency arrangements have been made by the local authorities, and in 171 camps occupied by 9,280 persons agreement for the taking over of the camp by the local authority has already been reached.
Current problems require the coordination of work between the Service Departments, the Ministry of Works, the Health Departments and the local authorities. This necessary coordination is ensured by regular meetings both at headquarters and in the regions of representatives of the Government Departments concerned, under the chairmanship of principal officers of the health departments, through whom the necessary arrangements with the local authorities are made.

Mr. Hogg: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his very full reply to my Question, may I ask whether he will answer this question? I understood him to say that, in certain cases, the camps were handed over to the local authorities for housing purposes. Can he tell us in how many cases, if any, those camps have been handed over after the action of squatters? Will he give us an assurance that the delay in reaching a decision on this matter on the part of the Government will not drive helpless people to take illegal action?

Mr. Bevan: A very large number of camps were offered to the local authorities before, or were about to be offered to local authorities. It does not necessarily follow that the fact that a camp is not offered to a local authority is the result of un-

necessary delay, although nobody is going to claim that where so many camps are involved some delay has not occurred. But the camps have had to be adapted to housing purposes before they could be handed over, and very great difficulties have been caused by having to adapt them when they have been in occupation. Whilst I am very sympathetic — nobody, I think, could be more so — with people's housing conditions, nevertheless, I do hope that statements will not be made in any part of the House or in any part of the country which would unduly distress those who are in need of houses.

Mr. Hogg: I do not think the right hon. Gentleman heard the first part of my supplementary question. I asked him specifically if there were any cases, and if so, how many, in which the action of handing over the camps took place subsequently to the action of the squatters.

Mr. Bevan: In quite a number of cases. If the hon. Gentleman will read my reply — I do not expect him to have gathered the full import of it on hearing it at first — but if he will study it, he will see that a quite considerable number of camps have been handed over to local authorities after they have been occupied by squatters.

Mr. Peter Freeman: May I ask whether these camps taken by local authorities and organised on communal lines are giving satisfaction and working satisfactorily? Are there any camps not taken over by local authorities, and what arrangements are being made to make them available?

Mr. Bevan: A very thorough examination of the whole question has been made in the course of the last two months, and, as hon. Members will appreciate, where camps are available they are immediately offered to local authorities. But I should like to point out that, had I offered some of these camps to local authorities, Members of the House would have taken grave objection.

Mr. McGovern: Is it not the case that in a number of districts where camps and huts were seized, it appears to the public that their occupation was afterwards legalised by the Government, and that that was a direct encouragement to a large number of people to seize other camps? Can the right hon. Gentleman square that with the fact that certain men have been placed in court for seizure, while others were legalised in a proper manner?

Mr. Bevan: It must inevitably happen that quite a number of anomalies were created in this matter. It is not the English manner to Lake a 100 per cent. precise view as to whether a person has or has not stepped over the borders of legality. We did not want to expel large numbers of people from camps in these circumstances. But I think everybody would agree that the whole episode was brought to a conclusion in a very dignified manner.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House how many persons now squatting have received orders to quit, and how many are still not provided with alternative accommodation?

Mr. Bevan: I said in only one instance.

Mr. Piratin: Can the right hon Gentleman say how many of the 145 camps are to be provided for Polish soldiers?

Mr. Bevan: As far as I know, none at all.

Mr. Piratin: Does the Minister know?

Mr. Bevan: I said, so far as I know, none at all. There are limits to my knowledge.

Mr. Wilfrid Roberts: In the camps which are to be handed over to local authorities, what total number of families does the right hon. Gentleman estimate will be accommodated?

Mr. Bevan: A very large number of camps were in the possession of local authorities before, and if the hon. Member will look at my reply he will see the precise figures.

Mr. Roberts: The question I asked was not how many were being accommodated now, but how many families will eventually be accommodated in these camps?

Mr. Bevan: I cannot tell yet.

Mr. Churchill: I take it that the right hon. Gentleman is definitely accepting a much lower standard of accommodation in these camps for people who wish to live there than would be acceptable in any permanent system of housing, and that the local authority regulations will be relaxed to a considerable extent in cases of people who wish to have any kind of home but who cannot have the kind of home which

we think proper. and which we intend to secure for them?

Mr. Bevan: It is quite true that the standard of accommodation in these camps is very much lower than we would consider to be desirable. However, it is very much higher than that of the slums in which the party opposite left people for so many years.

Mr. Drayson: As the term "squatter" is rather an inelegant phrase, would the Government consider changing the name of these people who are occupying such camps to that of "Bevan boys," in imitation of another Minister's great achievement?

Mr. Henry Usborne: In the case of camps that are said to be unsuitable from the point of view of living conditions and also uneconomic, would the Minister consider displaying notices thereabouts, explaining precisely why they are unsuitable, because a great many people would have their anxieties relieved if they knew why the camps were considered totally unsuitable?

Mr. Bevan: Certainly I will consider that.

Major Legge-Bourke: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider making two suggestions to local authorities? One is that, in these camps which are only going to be taken over for a very temporary period, they should keep some huts in hand as emergency accommodation, for people, especially those coming out of the Forces, who find themselves without a house. Will he also consider making some arrangements whereby local authorities other than those responsible for the area in which the camps are situated may be able to take over certain camps?

Mr. Bevan: It is precisely because certain camps were held idle for emergency purposes that hon. Members accused the Government of handing them over too slowly.

Mr. Rankin: Would the Minister encourage local authorities to give most sympathetic consideration to the special cases of those squatters who formerly had no homes of any kind whatsoever?

Mr. Bevan: I am certain that the local authorities take a very sympathetic view about people in their own localities in this matter.

Mr. Osborne: Would the Minister insist on local authorities putting in public services as quickly as possible?

Mr. Bevan: That is being done.

DAY NURSERIES

Mr. Wyatt: asked the Minister or Health whether he will make a statement on the present policy of the Government in regard to day nurseries.

Mr. Bevan: It is the Government's desire that day nurseries established during the war should be maintained wherever there is a recognised need for them, and a special Exchequer grant is now available to enable local authorities to continue, and, if necessary, to extend, their wartime arrangements where there is a continued demand for women in essential industries in their area. I am sending my hon. Friend a copy of a Circular 221/45, addressed to local authorities, which sets out the Government's views on the future of this and related services.

Mr. Wyatt: Is it not a fact that the Government grant to wartime nurseries has recently been reduced by 50 per cent.?

Mr. Bevan: It is a fact, as has been explained on many occasions, that the Government do not take the view that the national economy can be properly safeguarded with 100 per cent. grants to local authorities for continuing services.

Mr. John Lewis: Can my right hon. Friend say what percentage of the day nurseries have closed down owing to this lower grant?

Mr. Bevan: If the hon. Member will put a Question down, I will give him a reply.

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC HEALTH

Arlesey Hospital (Staff)

Mr. Walker-Smith: asked the Minister of Health, if he is aware that the Three Counties Hospital, Arlesey, Bedfordshire, has been compelled to restrict the admission of female patients owing to the shortage of nursing staff; and what steps he proposes to take to improve this position.

Mr. Bevan: I am aware that the Three Counties Hospital has been compelled to restrict the admission of female patients owing to the shortage of nursing staff. The Ministry of Labour has been asked to give the highest priority to filling the vacancies for nurses, and active consideration is being given to the question whether any other measures can be taken to relieve the situation.

Mr. John Paton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the rates of pay for student nurses compare very unfavourably with the rates offered in other employment, and, in view of the adverse effect on recruitment that may arise from that, will he make representations to the proper channels to have this matter examined?

Mr. Bevan: That, of course, is part of a wider question. As my hon. Friend knows, there have been recently a number of revisions in the remuneration of nurses, and that of student nurses is now under consideration.

Sewage Farm Site, Goring

Mr. Skeffington-Lodge: asked the Minister of Health whether he has now considered the Report he called for regarding alternatives to the site originally chosen for the establishment of a sewage disposal farm for Goring in the vicinity of Hartslock Woods; and whether he will now make a statement indicating that the Thames amenities at this point are not to be disturbed.

Mr. Bevan: The report submitted by the Henley Rural District Council shows that alternative sites are available for sewage disposal works for the parish of Goring. I have decided not to confirm the order for the compulsory purchase of the site originally proposed.

Mr. Skeffington-Lodge: While I think it normally unwise to praise Ministers lest they become complacent, might I express my appreciation of the decision given in this case, and further express the hope that this may be used as a precedent for future action by the Minister in regard to other amenity questions?

PUBLIC ASSISTANCE (FAMILY ALLOWANCES)

Mr. Garry Allighan: asked the Minister of Health if he is aware that Mr.


Harry Coveney, Isle of Grain, Kent. registered under the Blind Persons Act as unemployably blind, has had his public assistance grant cut by 15s. per week because he now receives family allowances; and whether any means test is applied to blind persons' grants or other recipients of public assistance.

Mr. Bevan: I am informed that the financial assistance granted to this blind person under the Blind Persons Acts has been reduced by the amount and for the reason stated. Both under those Acts and under the Poor Law the amount of assistance payable depends upon the needs of the applicant and his dependants.

Mr. Allighan: Will the Minister take this opportunity of explaining to the House and the public why there is a differentiation between civilian blind persons and blind persons who receive State allowances from the Ministry of Pensions?

Mr. Bevan: There are certain allowances paid to an applicant in respect of statutory rights. If these allowances are inadequate, these individuals may make application for supplementary payments, but they can only receive supplementary payments if able to show that they are in need of them, and these are the categories referred to in the Question.

Mr. Piratin: asked the Minister of Health what representations he has received from local authorities on proposals to increase allowances to persons in receipt of outdoor relief in respect of their dependent children since the coming into force of the Family Allowances Act, 1945; and what steps he proposes to take thereon.

Mr. Bevan: I have received representations from 19 of the 145 public assistance authorities in the sense indicated by the hon. Member. The whole matter is under active consideration.

Mr. Piratin: Can the Minister say when he is likely to make an announcement in the House on this matter which, as he and the House are aware, is the subject of widespread concern?

Mr. Bevan: No, Sir, I cannot give any undertaking at the moment as to when a statement will be made. I am aware, however, that there is a very general misunderstanding of the situation.

RENT TRIBUNAL, COLCHESTER

Mr. Charles Smith: asked the Minister of Health when he expects to make an announcement about the establishment of a tribunal under the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, to cover an area including the borough of Colchester and the Lexden and Winstree rural district.

Mr. Bevan: The tribunal will be established as soon as suitable offices, for which an urgent search is now being made, can be found for it. I do not at present propose to include the rural district of Lexden and Winstree in the area for which this tribunal will act, since I have not yet received the views of the council in reply to my circulars.

LOCAL AUTHORITIES (CO-OPERATIVE MEMBERS)

Major Guy Lloyd: asked the Minister of Health under what authority sanction is given to Co-operative members of local authorities to vote on matters affecting Co-operative interests; and how often such sanction has been given.

Mr. Bevan: The authority to grant these dispensations is conferred on me by Section 76 of the Local Government Act, 1933, and in respect of members of metropolitan borough councils by Section 52 of the London Government Act, 1939. The dispensations have been granted to the class of persons referred to on 205 occasions.

Major Lloyd: In view of the increased political power of this commercial organisation, will the Minister do his utmost to ensure that individual members of it do not unfairly exploit the power of their vested interests on local authorities?

Mr. Bevan: I am satisfied that, in almost every instance, the interest of the individuals concerned is very indirect indeed, and it is often very difficult to show any direct pecuniary interest in the decisions arrived at. However, these are powers conferred upon me by Parliament and I exercise them, I hope, with judicial impartiality. I can assure hon. Members that the law does place very rigid restrictions upon members of Co-operative societies.

Mr. H. Hynd: Is it not desirable that all members of local authorities should be members of their respective Co-operative Society?

Mr. Scollan: Will the Minister tell us whether the Government and his Department will consider some of these Cooperative people for bodies like the Coal Board and the Steel Board which have recently been appointed?

Mr. Bevan: I am afraid that is a much wider issue.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION

Teachers' Training Loans

Mrs. Leah Manning: asked the Minister of Education if she has information showing which local education authorities are demanding from ex-Servicemen the repayment of loans contracted for training as teachers before they entered the Forces.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Hardman): I regret that no information in the general form suggested is available. My right hon. Friend has already made it plain that she hopes all authorities will consider whether they can make a partial or total remission in particular cases.

Mrs. Manning: Is the Minister aware that there are local education authorities who are taking absolutely no notice whatever of the suggestion made by the Minister, and that ex-Servicemen are having to use the whole of their gratuities to pay off debts which were incurred before the war?

Mr. Hardman: The right hon. Lady would like to make it perfectly clear that she is opposed to the granting of any further loans to intending teachers, and local education authorities have been informed to this effect. I am advised, however, that the general remission of postwar loans to intending teachers is of doubtful legal propriety.

School Milk (Holidays)

Brigadier Mackeson: asked the Minister of Education what percentage of school-children applied to drink milk at schools at the commencement of the past summer holidays; and what is her estimate of the percentage who attended.

Mr. Hardman: I regret that the information is not available.

Brigadier Mackeson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that considerable quantities of milk were wasted during the school holidays this summer, and will he say what steps will be taken during future holidays to prevent such waste? Will he consider allowing the mothers to have this milk during the holidays so that they may give it to the children at home?

Mr. Hardman: It has been pointed out in Circular 119, paragraph 19, that if irregular attendance causes a waste of school milk during the holidays the arrangement shall be brought to an end. Every effort is made to see, although local authorities are not under any legal obligation to arrange for the children to receive school milk during the holidays, that no waste takes place.

Special School, Llansantffread

Mr. Peter Thorneycroft: asked the Minister of Education whether she can now say on what date her Department can arrange to make premises known as Llansantffread Court available to the owners

Mr. Hardman: My right hon. Friend has approved the purchase of a large house in Warwickshire which the local education authority for Birmingham propose to use for the evacuated special school which has been housed in Llansantffread Court. The authority consider it essential to cary out adaptations before these new premises can be used for that purpose. This work which will be kept to a minimum may take as long as nine months, but my right hon. Friend has received an assurance that every effort will be made to complete the essential alterations in the shortest possible time.

Mr. Thorneycroft: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Birmingham authority succeeded in the negotiation for these new premises as long ago as May of this year and that the whole of the period since has been taken up in trying to get permission to buy them from his Department? Are we going to have to wait another nine months before the owners of this hotel property can get the premises which belong to them?

Mr. Hardman: I shall be very glad to receive any further details which can be given to the Department and my right hon. Friend will be glad to look into the matter, but such information as I have has been given in my reply.

Mr. De la Bère: Is not the delay shocking?

Further Education and Training

Mr. Swingler: asked the Minister of Education whether she is aware of the continued delays in dealing with applications for awards under the Further Education and Training Scheme; and what action she proposes to take.

Mr. Hardman: My right hon. Friend is most anxious that candidates for awards should receive a decision as quickly as possible, and I can assure my hon. Friend that there is no avoidable delay, taking into account the large number of applications which have greatly increased in the last few months, the need for training the new clerical staff required, and the great shortage of typing staff.

Mr. Swingler: Does the Minister regard six months' delay as reasonable, and is he aware that a large number of ex-Servicemen suffer considerable financial embarrassment owing to the delay in making these awards?

Mr. Hardman: I would inform the hon. Member that we are very sympathetic towards this delay for a special reason. At the end of the first world war I, myself, had to wait three years before beginning my university training. Of course, that may have been a good thing.

Mr. De la Bère: What has that go to do with it?

Mr. Hardman: It indicates that there is some recognition at the Ministry of what this long delay means and that we have every sympathy with those graduates who are waiting. It may be of interest to the House to know that the increase in the number of applicants between March and September is from 1,816 to 3,658 a month. I can assure my hon. Friend that we shall do everything to prevent the delay continuing.

Mr. lipson: Will the Minister say what increase has been made in the number of assessors in order to speed matters up in

view of the greatly increased number of applications?

Mr. Hardmnn: I should be glad to find out that information for the hon. Member, but I cannot give it today.

Mr. De la Bère: Why not get on with it?

Agricultural Work (Children)

Mr. Gooch: asked the Minister of Education if she will state the extent to which child labour has been employed on the farms this year and if she will revoke forthwith the regulations which permit this.

Mr. Hardman: I have no particulars of the numbers of school children employed in agricultural work this year under the arrangements authorised by Regulations 29 and 30 of the Defence (Agriculture and Fisheries) Regulations. The possibility of revoking the Regulations at the end of this year is now under consideration.

University Awards

Mr. Weitzman: asked the Minister of Education whether, in respect of the awards for university students outlined in circular 104 of 16th May, 1946, she will state the income conditions and assessment of need under which awards will be made.

Mr. Hardman: No contribution is expected from a parent whose income does not exceed £600 a year. Parents with incomes above this figure will pay a contribution assessed on a graduated scale, which provides that an award will become honorary when the annual income exceeds £1,500. In arriving at the amount of income for this purpose allowances are made in respect of other dependent children and their educational expenses, dependent relatives, mortgage interest, and certain other liabilities.

Mr. Hogg: Would it not be wise to abolish the means test in this matter?

Emergency Training College, Luton

Mr. Warbey: asked the Minister of Education what use she is proposing to make of the buildings and equipment at Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire, now that the No. 5 Formation College has been closed down.

Mr. Hardman: Luton Hoo will be used as an emergency teachers' training college.

Mr. Warbey: Can my hon. Friend say when he hopes to commence the actual training of teachers at Luton Hoo?

Mr. Hardman: It is hoped that it will commence in January of next year.

Re-employed Teachers (Superannuation)

Mr. Turton: asked the Minister of Education whether she proposes to amend the Teachers Superannuation Act, 1925, and the rules thereunder, so as to" provide that the service given during the war 1939–45 by teachers, who came back after retirement or who continued to serve after the age of 65, may count as contributory or recognised service for the purpose of superannuation allowances.

Mr. Hardman: The service of teachers who came back to full time teaching in grant aided schools and educational institutions during the war is contributory service under the Teachers (Superannuation) Acts up to the age of 65. The age limit is part of the permanent plan of teachers' superannuation and no amendment of the Acts in this respect is proposed.

Mr. Turton: Would the hon. Gentleman reconsider that decision, because service has been given most loyally under difficult circumstances by these teachers over the age of 65 and they should not be penalised?

Mr. Hardman: The real trouble in this matter is that it would not be practicable to amend this limit without extending it to other classes of employed persons other than teachers.

Mr. Turton: Owing to the very unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.

B.B.C. (WELSH ADVISORY COMMITTEE)

Mr. Peter Freeman: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General whether he will now announce the formation of the Regional Advisory Committee of the B.B.C. for Wales and the names of those appointed.

The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Burke): I understand that the B.B.C. will shortly make an announcement on this subject.

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE

Telephone Service

Mr. C. Smith: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General the average weekly number of new telephone subscribers connected during the latest convenient period and the comparable figure for 1939.

Mr. Burke: The average weekly number of telephones connected during the quarter ended June, 1946, was 16,610, compared with 8,550 during the same quarter in 1939.

Postal Service (Japan)

Mr. Rees -Williams: asked the Assistant Postmaster - General what arrangements are being made for the resumption of a postal service between the United Kingdom and Japan.

Mr. Burke: A service restricted to unregistered, non-illustrated, postcards on personal or domestic matters to the four main islands of Japan is being brought into operation today. For the present, despatches are made only by surface route.

Mr. Rees-Williams: When is it hoped to bring in a full service in addition to the service which the Assistant Postmaster-General has mentioned?

Mr. Burke: We are advised on this matter by the Supreme Allied Command.

Telecommunications (Minister's Visit to U.S.A.)

Wing-Commander Roland Robinson: asked the Assistant Postmaster-General if he will make a statement about his recent visit to the U.S.A. to study the U.S. telecommunications system; and whether it is proposed to make any changes in the British telecommunications system as a result of his investigations.

Mr. Burke: In company with the Deputy Engineer-in-Chief of the Post Office, I visited a number of cities in the U.S.A. and Canada and we saw demonstrations of the latest operating practices and technical developments. In general, these matters have been progressing on


parallel lines in this country and in North America. We were shown some interesting experiments, which will be closely watched by the Post Office engineers, but so far as can be foreseen no major changes are likely to be made in the British telecommunications system as a result of our visit. I will send the hon. Member further details if he desires.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Has the hon. Gentleman studied the American system of automatic trunk telephone communication, and is he proposing to introduce a like system in this country?

Mr. Burke: Yes, Sir. That is being done.

WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION (FAMILY ALLOWANCES)

Mr. Garry Allighan: asked the Minister of National Insurance whether he is aware that Mr. C. Odd, 30, Jubilee Crescent, Gravesend, has been receiving £4 per week as compensation in respect of injuries sustained while in the employment of the Port of London Authority; that he has a wife and six children and that 25s. per week is now being stopped from his workmen's compensation on account of family allowances; and, in view of the fact that this is not in accordance with the agreement reached with the British Employers' Corporation, what further action he intends to take.

The Minister of National Insurance (Mr. James Griffiths): I have ascertained that the case mentioned by my hon. Friend falls outside the scope of the arrangement made with the British Employers Confederation, the terms of which are set out in the reply given on 25th July to the Question put to me by the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. T. Smith), a copy of which I am sending him.

Mr. Allighan: Are we to understand from the reply that in no sense will the employer or the insurance company be relieved of any responsibility to the injured person?

Mr. Griffiths: The arrangement which I announced on 25th July concerned a certain number of cases, and, according to the information which I now have, this case falls outside. If my hon. Friend has any other information and will send it to me, I will look into the matter.

SCOTLAND (JUSTICES OF THE PEACE)

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: asked the Prime Minister why appointments, of justices of the peace in Scotland are made by the Lord Chancellor and not by the Secretary of State for Scotland.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Attlee): Since 1707 justices of the peace in Scotland have been appointed by the Crown by a special Commission under the Great Seal of Great Britain, and in their report of 1911 the Royal Commission on the Selection of Justices of the Peace recommended that, so long as these appointments are made by the Crown, the Lord Chancellor as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal is the most suitable Minister to be entrusted with the responsibility of advising on the appointments to be made. I understand that the new Royal Commission on Justices of the Peace which is just about to begin its labours may be expected inter alia to review this question.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: While: thanking the Prime Minister for his reply, may I ask him if he really thinks that the Lord Chancellor, who has no jurisdiction whatever in Scotland, is the appropriate person to deal with this matter?

The Prime Minister: That is a matter of opinion, and I shall await any remarks by the new Commission, but it seems to have been held by successive people from 1707 onwards.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Is this not the reason for a very large number of absurdities and injustices in Scotland since that date?

Oral Answers to Questions — GERMANY

Joint Economic Action

Sir Ralph Glyn: asked the Chancellor or the Duchy of Lancaster if he is now in a position to make a statement concerning the economic changes in Germany resulting from the negotiations between the British and U.S. elements of the Allied Control Commission; and to what extent the French Government, not being bound by the Potsdam Agreement, propose to cooperate in so far as the French zone in Germany is concerned.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Hynd): As a result of the negotiations referred to by the hon. Member, a joint Anglo-American Board has been established and has accepted certain basic policy principles. There is to be established as nearly as practicable a common standard of living in the British and American zones, with common ration scales. To achieve this, the resources of both zones will be used to their common advantage. There are to be common import and export policies, and imports into each zone will be limited to agreed items and quantities required in addition to indigenous resources, to provide the agreed standard of living. The execution of this agreed policy will be in the hands of representatives of German authorities in the two zones, subject to the direct supervision of British and American officials. So far the French representative in Germany has not been authorised to join in the new arrangement, although the British and American representatives have several times made it clear that we would welcome his participation and also that of the Russian representative.

Fishing Craft (Release)

Sir R. Glyn: asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how far he has been able, with the Admiralty, to agree on the release from minesweeping duties of German trawlers and other fishing craft capable of obtaining fish supplies from the furthest fishing grounds so as to increase the rations of the German population; and to what extent is equipment and gear available.

Mr. J. Hynd: Since January, 1946, 10 trawlers and 68 K.F.K's. have been released to the Fishery Control Board for reconversion to fishing craft. Of the British allocation three trawlers and 68 K.F.K's. are still engaged on essential minesweeping duties and these will be released as soon as possible. First priority is being given to the reconversion of these vessels by the provision of repair facilities and materials and generally everything is being done to increase fish supplies available in the British zone.

Sir R. Glyn: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether there are sufficient gear and nets provided so that fishing can be continued to increase food supplies to Germany?

Mr. Hynd: I would not like to say that there are all the gear and all the other requirements that we would wish, but I can say that first priority is being given to the supply of food in all directions, and particular attention is being paid to fishing. So far as our resources permit the equipment is being provided.

Mr. R. S. Hudson: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether in any period, say within the last 12 months, any trawlers fitted for minesweeping, and which could have been adopted for fishing, have been destroyed on account of their being war potential?

Mr. Hynd: I think I can give a categorical negative reply in that case. There have been a number of hulks that have been destroyed, because following upon the tripartite decision, on examination it was decided that it would be uneconomical to try to repair these in the time and that we should concentrate our available resources on the repair of those vessels which can be repaired and put into operation.

Air-Commodore Harvey: In considering this matter of the supply of fishing gear for German vessels, will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that British vessels are having to wait eight or nine months to get fishing gear?

Coal Allocations (Industry)

Mr. Skeffington-Lodge: asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he will make a statement on the proposal entirely to close down five and partially to close down eight iron and steel plants in the British zone of Germany; if he will give the figures of unemployment among Germans likely to be caused by this development, the reasons for it, and the steps which have been taken to acquaint the local German population with the reasons.

Mr. J. Hynd: Owing to the growing depletion of coal stocks in the zone and the urgent need of increasing allocations of coal for such purposes as housing repairs, it has, unfortunately, been found necessary to reduce the allocations to certain other industrial activities, including steel. This has been done in consultation with the German Economic Advisory Board. I am unable to give exact figures of the effect on local Ger-


man employment, but am obtaining these from Germany and will communicate them to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Skeffington-Lodge: Is my hon. Friend aware that owing to the failure to publicise in the British zone of Germany the information which he has just given out and the other details to which he has referred, considerable alarm and despondency has been caused among German civilians, and, taking a long-term view, may not the dismantling of factories be a case of cutting off our noses to spite our faces?

Mr. Hynd: I am quite certain that alarm and despondency would be caused among German workers and any other workers when there was interference, however inevitable, with their employment but, as I have stated in the answer to the Question, the immediate cause of the restriction on the operations of these factories at this stage has been due to the coal situation, which is unavoidable. The wider question of the dismantling or allocation of factories for reparations is another matter.

Mr. Edelman: In view of the world's steel shortage, would my hon. Friend be willing to maintain these steel plants in production should coal become available?

Mr. Hynd: It is our intention to encourage the production of steel up to the maximum permitted under the level of industry agreement. I am afraid we are a long way off that, and even if more coal were to become available it would be some time before we could reach that level, but we would certainly be anxious to increase the production of steel up to that level if at all possible.

Oral Answers to Questions — EMPLOYMENT

Scotland

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: asked the Minister of Labour the total number of unemployed males and females in Scotland at the latest convenient date and the approximate percentage of insured men and women unemployed in Scotland as compared with the corresponding per cent. ages for England and Wales.

The Minister of Labour (Mr. Isaacs): At 12th August, 1946, 56,343 males and 19,756 females; that is 5 per cent. and 4 per cent. respectively of the estimated

numbers insured. The corresponding percentages for England and Wales were 2½ and 1½.

Mr. Thornton-kemsley: Can the Minister say what the Government are doing about this rising tide of unemployment in Scotland?

Mr. Isaacs: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade on 21st May, 1946, in reply to a Question by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Central Glasgow (Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison). It is a full list which covers the whole of the steps taken.

Mr. McGovern: Is the Minister aware that a large number of the male unemployed are over 50 years of age, and that the view is held by his officials that these men will never again get employment? Has he any policy, or is he considering any policy as applied to men of that age?

Mr. Isaacs: That is another question, and if the hon. Member will put down a Question I will look into it. I cannot accept that that is the view of my officials.

Industrial Hostels (Cost)

Mr. W. J. Brown: asked the Minister of Labour if he can state, as at a recent convenient date, the total capital expenditure incurred by National Hostels Corporation; the profit or loss made; and the amount of any subsidy from the Exchequer.

Mr. Isaacs: This precise information is not readily available. During the financial year ended 31st March, 1946, the corporation managed 64 industrial hostels for my Ministry, the capital cost of which was approximately £7,500,600. The total deficit incurred by the corporation at 31st March, 1946, covering the period from the middle of 1941 to that date, was approximately £1,400,000 excluding capital charges and some part of the cost of heating and maintenance.

Closed Shop Issue

Mr. W. J. Brown: asked the Minister of Labour if he can state the Government's policy in relation to the closed shop issue.

Mr. Isaacs: The hon. Member does not explain what he means by the "closed" shop issue." If he would care to state his meaning more precisely, I will be happy to answer any further Question he may care to put down.

Mr. Brown: Might I ask, does not the right hon. Gentleman read the "Evening Standard"?

Mr. Isaacs: Yes, Sir. I not only read the "Evening Standard," but I read other literature that has been published from time to time by the hon. Member. I would remind him that I know of a closed shop which is closed because the employer will not permit the employment of trade unionists.

Mr. Churchill: What is the Government definition of the "closed shop issue"?

Mr. Isaacs: I would like to give the same reply to the right hon. Gentleman. If he will tell me what is meant by the "closed shop" I will answer him.

Mr. Churchill: The right hon. Gentleman is responsible for dealing with these matters. Has he not formulated in his mind any idea what the closed shop issue is, and if he has, why should not he tell the House?

Mr. Isaacs: I would be quite willing to tell the House if hon. Members would tell me what they mean by the "closed shop." I know what the "closed shop" means in America. It is an American term which has been imported into use in this country for the purpose of causing trouble to the Government.

Mr. Frank Byers: Might I ask the Minister if there has been a Cabinet decision to evade this issue?

Mr. Isaacs: If I understood the hon. Member to say that the Cabinet had reached a decision to evade the issue, I would point out that the matter has not been discussed by the Cabinet. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] When the Cabinet consider it necessary to discuss it they will discuss it, and when they do discuss it and come to a decision they will not evade the issue.

Mr. Churchill: Is it not a fact that 20 or 30 men have been dismissed by an employer on the orders of a great trade union because they did not belong to the great trade union? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I am asking, is it not a fact that that is so? Have the Government not even taken the trouble to consider the implications of a step like that? Have they no opinion to give the House except the farrago of confusion, evasion, tricky

words and formulas in which the right hon. Gentleman is indulging?

Mr. Paton: On a point of Order. Is it in Order for an hon. Member of this House repeatedly to ask a Minister to define a term which he says is so ambiguous that he cannot himself define it?

Mr. Speaker: I think that is quite in Order. What I would suggest is that, while we are having a lot of fun, we are not making very much progress.

Mr. Churchill: rose—

Mr. Speaker: I indicated that I had decided we would leave this subject.

Mr. Churchill: I rose, Sir, with very great respect, on the point of Order, to assure you that my intervention in this matter was not designed to cause fun.

Mr. W. J. Brown: On a point of Order. I give notice that in view of the national importance of this subject I will raise it on the Adjournment.

Mr. Hector Hughes: On a point of Order. May I ask for your Ruling, Mr. Speaker? Is not the burden on the hon. Member who puts down a Question in this House to put it in unambiguous language?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of Order. It is a purely hypothetical question.

Directed Workers (Students)

Lieut.-Commander Hutchison: asked the Minister of Labour whether he will now allow science students who had only taken part of their course prior to being directed to work of national importance to return to their universities before the expiration of the existing minimum qualifying period of three years' service.

Mr. Isaacs: No, Sir. To do so would give civilians an advantage over members of the Forces, which I could not justify.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Travellers' Currency

Brigadier Mackeson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will give an estimate of the total sum of money taken out of the United Kingdom during the past six months by persons proceeding


to Europe and the U.S.A.; and of the total amount brought in by persons who hold European or U.S. passports.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Glenvil Hall): The exchange cost of outward travellers during the six months ended 31st August, 1946, was about £9 million for travellers to Europe and £4 million for travellers to the U.S.A. No figures of receipts from inward travellers are available.

War Damage Payments (Elderly People)

Mr. Lipson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will now authorise the payment of agreed war damage claims to persons of 65 years of age and over, in view of the fact that many of them are suffering financial hardship which payment would relieve.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: As my right hon. Friend indicated in reply to Questions on 30th April last, there are practical difficulties which make it impossible, he is afraid, to apply a special priority for old people in the discharge of payments under the War Damage Acts.

Mr. Lipson: Will the hon. Gentleman considei whether it would not be possible to make those payments in cases of proved hardship?

Mr. Glenvil Hall: The difficulty is to decide how far hardship can go before one recognises it. I would say, on behalf of my right hon. Friend, that he is giving a good deal of thought to this, and we are anxious at the earliest possible moment to do something to clear up these outstanding points.

Mr. Osborne: What are those practical difficulties, in view of the fact that I have extracted from one Department a payment of this kind?

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL CONCERT HALL

Major Tufton Beamish: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that there is no hall in London worthy of our past and present contribution to music; that the late Sir Henry Wood inaugurated a fund, which has since grown considerably, to help pay for a special concert hall, and expressed the hope that it might be erected in Park

Square, which is Crown properly; and what plans the Government have for furthering this project, or any alternative project, to provide a national concert hall in London.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: I am aware of the shortage of concert halls in London, of the Henry Wood Memorial Fund, and that proposals have been made for the erection of concert halls in London. While the Government are in sympathy with the common aim of these proposals, they do not appear to be sufficiently far advanced for the Government to express a preference for any one of them.

Major Beamish: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether there is likely to be any objection to the use of Park Square as a site if the necessary approaches are made to that effect?

Mr. Glenvil Hall: So far as the Park Square site is concerned, I gather they had a site but no money, and there is some doubt whether the site chosen would bear a building of this kind in view of the fact that the Underground Railway runs about 70 feet beneath it.

Mr. McAllister: Will the Chancellor see to it that the planners of Park Square are consulted before any decision is taken in this matter?

Mr. Glenvil Hall: I think that is a matter with which the Ministry of Town and Country Planning would deal.

Oral Answers to Questions — EQUAL PAY (ROYAL COMMISSION)

Mr. W. J. Brown: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he expects to receive the Report of the Royal Commission on Equal Pay.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: As the hon. Member may have seen, the Chairman of the Commission has recently stated publicly that if there is no unforeseen obstacle the report will be received almost at once.

Mr. Brown: May I ask the hon. Gentleman if he will be good enough to make it available as soon as he can after he has seen it?

Mr. Glenvil Hall: Most certainly; as soon as it is possible.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Churchill: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he has any statement to make on Government Business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Morrison): Yes, Sir. The Business for next week will be as follows:
Monday, 14th October—Consideration of the Motion relating to the Fair Wages Clauses in Government contracts, and remaining stages of the Atomic Energy Bill, if not previously obtained.
Tuesday, 15th October—Second Reading of the Coinage Bill, the Public Works Loans (No. 2) Bill, and of the Unemployment Insurance (Eire Volunteers) Bill.
Wednesday, 16th October—A Debate on the coal situation will take place on the Motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Thursday, 17th October—Committee and remaining stages of the County Councils Association (Scotland) Bill, the Police (Scotland) Bill (Lords), and of the Education (Scotland) Bill (Lords).
Friday, 18th October—Committee and remaining stages of the Coinage Bill, the Public Works Loans (No. 2) Bill, and of the Unemployment Insurance (Eire Volunteers) Bill.

Sir Henry Morris-Jones: Are we not to have a statement today from the Minister for War with regard to the court-martial of the parachutists?

Mr. H. Morrison: I understand that that will follow.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: Do the Government propose to make any statement, and give the House an opportunity of debating any statement they may care to make, about the present situation in Palestine, or the present position of the negotiations?

Mr. H. Morrison: I should not have thought that that would be useful at the present moment. We will of course keep my hon. Friend's suggestion in mind, but I think it would be the general view of the House that it would not be useful just now.

Mr. Churchill: I am rather inclined to think, Sir, that it might be useful in the course of the next fortnight or so to have a discussion on the situation in Palestine,

and perhaps the matter could be raised through the usual channels?

Mr. S. Silverman: Would my right hon. Friend bear in mind that the winter months are coming on, and that there are many thousands of people in Germany anxiously waiting to see what their fate is to be?

Mr. H. Morrison: There are all sorts of difficulties, not only for them but for us— very great difficulties, and we get most of them. But we will keep an open mind on the point of the possibility or desirability of a Debate and, if it is raised through the usual channels, we shall be willing to discuss it. I feel that at this moment it might possibly not be useful.

Mr. Frank Byers: Will the Government afford time for consideration of the Motion standing in the name of the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) and others calling upon the Government to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the question of the closed shop?

Mr. H. Morrison: I do not think we can find time for that at the present moment.

Mr. Byers: Does that mean that the Government do not regard this as an important matter?

Mr. H. Morrison: I would not say it is not an important matter, but it is a matter for consideration whether it is a question for the Government or, in the ordinary way, for industry.

Mr. Churchill: Cannot the right hon. Gentleman at least give us an assurance that this matter will be taken into consideration by the Cabinet, because we have just been told, at Question time, that the Cabinet have not even considered the matter? Surely it is a matter which should be taken into consideration by His Majesty's Government, and such consideration should precede any decision as to whether we should have a Debate upon it or not?

Mr. H. Morrison: The right hon. Gentleman knows and understands constitutional practice and doctrine in these matters, and what is taken into consideration by the Cabinet is the responsibility of the Prime Minister and the Minister concerned. It is a domestic matter for the Government. If the situation becomes


such that it requires Cabinet consideration, no doubt it will receive it, but it is a matter for the Government.

Mr. Churchill: But it was the Minister of Labour who made this disclosure to the House. He imparted to the House the fact that the Cabinet had never discussed or considered the question of the closed shop. He did not know what it was. Of course, if the Cabinet begin to make revelations of the subjects they discuss or do not discuss, it is only natural that they should be asked questions upon those points.

Mr. H. Morrison: The fact remains that what remains departmental and what goes to the Cabinet is a domestic matter for the Cabinet. The right hon. Gentleman really must face the fact that another right hon. Gentleman now presides over the Government.

Mr. Churchill: I am very glad to face the fact, such as it is, but I must really point out—I do not think the Prime Minister was in the House when this statement was made—that the Minister of Labour stated definitely that the Cabinet had not discussed this matter, and that is not a departmental but a constitutional issue. If the right hon. Gentleman chooses to tell us that they have not discussed this matter, I think that we are entitled to ask that they should discuss the matter, or at any rate that the Prime Minister should say whether or not in fact this matter has been discussed in the Cabinet. You raised these matters, and you have to be asked about them.

Major Legge-Bourke: Will the Leader of the House tell us whether it is intended to publish a White Paper or make some statement giving details of the inquiry into the King David Hotel disaster, which the Prime Minister stated at the time he would investigate? Secondly, is any statement to be made on the steps which the C.I.G.S. took regarding General Barker's letter?

Mr. H. Morrison: With regard to the first point, of course the Government had inquiries made and received reports on the facts of the King David Hotel outrage. I think that they have been pretty extensively published in the Press, and I did not gather that it was the intention of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister

to publish a White Paper. With regard to the last point, what I said in the Debate on Palestine was that the Chief of the Imperial General Staff would follow up the matter and the statement of General Barker upon it. I expressed the view of the Government, and I thought that the House would be confident in leaving the matter in the competent hands of Field-Marshal Montgomery. I think that is where we intended to leave it and where it should be left.

Mr. Janner: Does the Leader of the House really not intend to follow the indication which he himself gave in respect of the letter of the General? Is he going to let the House know what steps are to be taken?

Mr. H. Morrison: I made the position of the Government perfectly clear in the Debate on that point, and there is no necessity for me to make any further statement.

Mr. Speaker: I think that we had better get on with the next Business.

MUTINY CHARGES, MALAYA (CONVICTIONS QUASHED)

The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Bellenger): I have now had an opportunity of considering the advice of the Judge Advocate-General on the proceedings of the field general court martial held in Malaya in August and September, 1946, for the trial of the 258 men of the 13th Parachute Battalion. This review has been carried out by the Judge Advocate-General, who is appointed on the recommendation of the Secretaries of State for War and Air, and holds his office under Letters Patent from the Crown. All courts martial at home and abroad, and petitions thereon which raise points of law, are finally reviewed in his office.
The advice I have received from the Judge Advocate-General with regard to this particular trial is that there was a number of irregularities of a substantial nature which may well have prejudiced the accused individually. These irregularities in his opinion rendered the trial as a whole so unsatisfactory that the convictions ought not to be allowed to stand. In the circumstances I feel bound to quash all the convictions on the charge of mutiny, and to relieve each of the accused


of the consequences of his trial. Orders to this effect and for their release from imprisonment are being issued forthwith.
I would like to stress that I have followed this course of action entirely on legal grounds, and I am still satisfied that there was sufficient prima facie evidence to justify a charge of mutiny being preferred. Although it will be a matter for relief in many quarters that the men who were convicted should be relieved from the consequences of their trial, I must emphasise that there are proper means of representing grievances in the Army which must be followed if discipline is to be maintained.
Finally, I think the House will agree with me when I say that this case is an outstanding example of the way in which the processes of military law can operate quickly to safeguard the interests of justice.

Mr. Churchill: Can the right hon. Gentleman explain how it was that the Judge Advocate-General was not consulted and made acquainted with this procedure at an earlier period? The mutiny, or what is called a mutiny, although it seemed a very mild form of mutiny compared with some we have seen in our own time, occurred in May. All June passed. Am I not right in presuming that in June convening orders were given, or the question of bringing these men to trial, either individually or collectively, was discussed? Was not the Judge Advocate-General consulted at that time? What happened in June? What happened in July, when this matter was going on? What happened in August, when these men were still confined under the severe conditions of a tropical land? Why is it only now, when a great storm has been raised in the Press and Parliament, that the Judge Advocate-General is suddenly consulted, and the right hon. Gentleman has to defer to his legal opinion and say that the whole procedure from beginning to end is quashed for the ringleaders as well as the rank and file—all their trials are quashed? How is it that for five long months the Government, with the advice of the Judge Advocate-General always available at their disposal, have permitted this matter to drag itself out to the general suffering of individuals and the impairment of discipline in the Army?

Mr. Bellenger: The right hon. Gentleman himself has held the Office which I now hold, and he is very well acquainted with the machinery of courts-martial procedure. He will know that even in an individual case there has to be a considerable time in taking a summary of evidence before the accused can be brought to trial. In this case there were 258 men and more—cases in which individual investigations had to be made and their defending officer instructed. I do not think, looking back, that any delay was made in bringing these men to trial. The mutiny occurred on 14th May, and the trial commenced on nth August. In the circumstances, I think, with the large numbers of accused, that that was not an unreasonable delay. In regard to the Judge Advocate-General, his deputy was there in Malaya, and he had full powers to advise the Commander-in-Chief and also the court. In view of the position of the Judge Advocate-General as the final reviewing authority on matters of law, I think that it would have been very improper if he had interfered at any stage in the proceedings.

Mr. Churchill: Are we to understand then that the then Secretary of State for War was officially apprised of the fact that action was to be taken against 258 men on a charge of mutiny—a collective trial as it were—and he never had any idea of asking "Is this legal? What precedents are there for this?" Are we to understand that he never asked the Judge Advocate-General, "Is this all right? Is this a legal and proper way of doing it? and that no member of the Government or of the Army Council promoted inquiries of that kind? The right hon. Gentleman is quite right in saying that I have had experience of these matters. I unhappily presided over the Army when there was a shoal of mutinies. No one ever attempted to bring large masses of the rank and file to a mass trial. There was the naval mutiny in the days of Ramsay MacDonald's Premiership, and no one thought of bringing great masses to trial. Why was this not settled by the Government and the Cabinet at the time?

Mr. Bellenger: I still adhere to my view that the Government as a Government ought not to interfere in judicial matters of this nature. Moreover, there was the Deputy Judge Advocate-General out in


Malaya, and surely he should have been the authority to safeguard the course of justice.

Mr. Garry Allighan: While expressing what is the feeling of most Members of this House—gratification at the humane decision of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War—could I also ask him whether the proceedings at the court-martial will be made available at the Stationery Office and in the Vote Office to the public and Members of this House, respectively?

Mr. Bellenger: No, Sir.

Mr. Manningham-Buller: Could we not be given some indication of what these irregularities were, so that the House may be fully acquainted of the grounds on which the right hon. Gentleman has come to his decision? Further, is it not the case that the official to whom the right hon. Gentleman referred in his statement serves under the Judge Advocate-General in this country?

Mr. Bellenger: I am not quite sure as to the precise implication of the latter part of the hon. and learned Gentleman's supplementary question. With regard to the reasons for the Judge Advocate-General's advice to me, I am not prepared to offer them to the House in detail. I am satisfied that the statement I have made this afternoon, that the Judge Advocate-General considered that there were a number of irregularities of a substantial nature, which may well have prejudiced the accused individually, gives sufficient indication of the grounds on which he has based his advice.

Mr. Manningham-Buller: I did not ask the right hon. Gentleman to state them in detail. Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Oliver Committee, reporting in 1938, recommended that the Judge Advocate-General should give his reasons for refusing to allow a petition? Does it not follow from that that it is equally desirable that there should be some indication of the grounds on which the Government reached their decision?

Mr. Bellenger: I am not aware of all the details of that Report although I have read it. This, however, is not a case of a petition. It is a case of proceedings of a court martial coming before the Judge Advocate-General for review. In the

ordinary way every case does. He gave me certain advice, and I accepted it.

Mr. Churchill: Is there any reason whatever why Parliament should not know and—

Mr. Speaker: I had called another Member.

Mr. James Callaghan: Will my right hon. Friend take very great care to see that in any forthcoming court martial of those responsible for conditions at this camp—and they are really responsible for this court martial—there should be no irregularities?

Mr. Bellenger: There will be no further court martial in connection with this matter.

Mr. Martin Lindsay: While we are all glad, on humanitarian grounds, that these men have got off owing to illegal irregu-laxities, is the Minister aware that if adequate steps had been taken when the first Royal Air Force mutiny took place, this mutiny would not have occurred? What steps is the right hon. Gentleman taking to ensure that the proper step he has now taken is not regarded in the Services either as an act of clemency or an act of weakness which will cause similar occurrences?

Mr. Bellenger: I hope it will not, but some of the questions which have been addressed to me rather indicate that some attempt is being made to persuade the Services that this decision has not been come to on purely legal grounds.

Mr. H. D. Hughes: Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that adequate inquiries will be made, and disciplinary action taken, if necessary, in regard to those responsible for the conditions in the camp, and responsible for the irregularities in the procedure which have caused so much suffering to so many people?

Mr. Bellenger: The House will understand that these irregularities are not only military irregularities. Now and again they occur in civil proceedings. Two courts of inquiry have already been held into the conditions in this camp, and, already, certain action has been taken against those who we think were mainly responsible for not rectifying those conditions.

Mr. Churchill: Is there any reason why the irregularities which the Judge Advocate-General has now considered were such as to vitiate the trial should not be stated? I do not mean at this moment, but why should they not be made public? Surely it would be of great advantage to the future to know what are the principles on which we are proceeding. Since when has it been held to be disadvantageous to the cause of justice for the principles on which judicial authorities give their decisions to be made known? If that is not so, how are others to regulate their conduct? Was the question of the mass trial one of the causes of the irregularity? In any case, will not a full statement be made of the legal grounds which have led to the quashing of these sentences?

Mr. Bellenger: I am prepared to consider whether it would be possible to give a more extensive explanation of the reasons which the Judge Advocate-General has given to me and which led him to believe that these convictions could not stand

Mr. Churchill: I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. That, I am sure, would be advantageous from every point of view. The quashing of a trial is a very serious matter. People ought to know why.

Mrs. Braddock: In view of the fact that a lot of us have very definite information that there was deliberate provocation of the men in this matter, will my right hon. Friend take steps to see that the way complaints can be dealt with is altered? For instance, it is well known in the Army that a man has to do a job before he complains, and that when he has done it, and complains afterwards, he is told that because he has done it there is no reason for the complaint. Will my right hon. Friend see that something different is done, and will he ask for the whole of the information which is at the disposal of Members of this House in regard to the commencement of the mutiny?

Mr. Bellenger: I can assure the hon. Lady that soldiers know very well how they can complain. It might be of interest to her to know that I am receiving from Members of Parliament 600 letters a week complaining about their soldier constituents.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Will the Minister look at the situation which has been disclosed in the Judge Advocate-General's Department, where there is apparent lack of organisation and method? From what he has said today it appears that the Deputy Judge Advocate-General in Malaya informed the Commander-in-Chief that the proceedings were legal, whereas the Judge Advocate-General in London took the reverse view.

Mr. Bellenger: Without accepting entirely the point made by the noble Lord, obviously I shall look into the Judge Advocate-General's machinery.

Mr. Speaker: I must point out to the House that this is all cutting into the time of Scotland, and there will be another grievance from across the Border if we are not careful.

Sir Henry Morris-Jones: May I be allowed to ask the right hon. Gentleman one question? Will he inquire into the present conditions under which our men are serving in Japan?

Mr. Hector Hughes: As it now emerges that the sufferings of these unfortunate men were due to irregularities on the spot in Malaya, will my right hon. Friend say whether he is considering making some compensation to them for the sufferings which they have endured?

Mr. Bellenger: I think that the result which I have announced this afternoon is a very substantial compensation

Air-Commodore Harvey: Will the right hon Gentleman give an indication as to what the future of these men is to be? Are they to be given a chance to serve in another command, and not in the present command?

Mr. Bellenger: I would hope that the future of these men is the future of all good soldiers—that they will be good soldiers and serve their time in the Army and come out with an honourable discharge.

Squadron-Leader Fleming: Will the Minister tell the House why it was agreed by the Deputy Judge Advocate-General that all these 240-odd men should be defended by only one defending officer, instead of being defended individually, as they were entitled to be?

Mr. S. Silverman: In view of the critical nature of many of the questions, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that it is the view of many of us that, having regard to the time that had elapsed and having regard to the date of the convictions, the Judge Advocate-General acted with speed and expedition in this matter, such as to entitle him to the congratulations of the House?

Mr. Speaker: I hope that we shall now get on with the Business.

HOUSING, SCOTLAND

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. William Whiteley.]

4.10 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Westwood): I welcome this opportunity of reviewing the recent housing progress in Scotland, and I want the House to note that I use the word "progress" to indicate the state which we have now reached in the provision of temporary and permanent houses. Hon. Members, I am sure, have before them copies of the last published monthly report, which showed the position in Scotland up to 31st August. I propose to supplement the information in that report by giving figures up to 2nd October.
Taking the temporary housing progress, there has been a marked acceleration in the completion of temporary houses during September. As the published report shows 6,118 of these houses had been completed at the end of August, when the average rate of completion was about 245 houses a week. By 2nd October, the total number completed had risen to 8,545 giving an average rate of completion for the last five weeks of 485 houses a week, or about double the rate in August. I am confident that we can maintain this improved rate of completion, and even increase it still further. If we can do this, we may look forward to having completed something like half of the total Scottish programme of 32,000 temporary houses by the end of this year.
The production of Tarran, Arcon and Uniseco houses has been substantially speeded up. Indeed, the danger in the immediate future with regard to these types is not likely to be a failure in the rate of delivery of these structures but the possibility that they may now come forward in larger numbers than can be accommodated on the sites which have so far been prepared for them. In saying this, I level no criticism at the local authorities. I do not want to be accused by anyone in this Debate of criticising the local authorities, so far as that aspect of the subject is concerned, because, from the start, and for a considerable time afterwards, the local authorities played up well in the advance preparation of temporary housing sites, and it was only the non-appearance of the houses accord-


ing to schedule, in the early stages, that gave rise, in some cases, to a slackening of local effort in this respect. But, in the face of the present acute shortage of housing accommodation, it would be impossible to justify a situation where there were houses in the factories and insufficient sites on which to put them in the various localities.

Commander Galbraith: This is a very important point. From the August return, which was the last we have, 32,000 sites have been acquired, and no fewer than 15,500 sites have been completed. That was in August. The right hon. Gentleman has told us that he does not expect more than 16,000 houses at the end of the year. Can he explain how the shortage of sites will arise?

Mr. Westwood: I have tried to explain that there was a certain slackening in the provision of sites because of the fact that houses were not being delivered in accordance with the schedule. I am not blaming anyone for that. It is natural that should take place. Now we want all the speeding up we can get, and surely hon. Members on the other side of the House are going to help me in my appeal to the local authorities. Politics do not come into it, because this is a case where every one is entitled to make all the appeals possible to the local authorities to deal with this vital problem. I would, therefore, appeal once more to the local authorities concerned to push on with all speed with the outstanding work for the preparation of their sites, so that the Houses may be erected, and, at the earliest possible date, occupied by the families who need them.
I might mention specially the steadily growing stream of aluminium houses coming out of Blackburn's factory at Dumbarton. The output here, so far dependent largely on manual operations, has been kept fairly well up to schedule. At the moment it has reached a level of about 100 houses a week. But with the full mechanisation of the factory this is expected to rise to a peak of 250 houses a week by the end of the year. Since the aluminium house is the most highly prefabricated type being supplied, the amount of building required at the site is small and this increased production therefore promises a substantial acceleration in

the number of houses available for actual occupation. Let me add that with over 8,000 temporary houses occupied, almost no complaints have been received from the tenants. Though substandard in area and definitely a temporary expedient which we shall get rid of as soon as possible, these houses are giving satisfaction to thousands of families who find them an immense improvement on the overcrowded and otherwise unsatisfactory accommodation from which they have come. In particular, the modern kitchen equipment is proving a tremendous attraction. Indeed I know one local authority who received applications for temporary houses from tenants occupying permanent houses of standard size, which seems to indicate that to the modern housewife, efficient domestic equipment is just as important as living space.
I come now to the permanent houses. Progress here has not been as good as I should have wished. We have an abundance of sites approved (over 200,000 for permanent houses) while tenders have been approved or central orders placed for the considerable total of 54,227 houses. Against this, however, the number of houses under construction at 2nd October was 22,371 and the number completed 3,627. Progress with the completion of the houses has in fact been slow. What is the reason for this slowness? For some time after the end of the war we were faced with an acute shortage of labour with a force of only some 6,000 men engaged on housing work. This has now risen to over 30,000 and although these men are working on both temporary and permanent houses the total force now engaged on housing is greater than it ever was before the war. There are still local shortages in particular trades, notably bricklayers, but while the labour force available for permanent housing will have to continue to increase if we are to be able to undertake the large programme which lies ahead of us, by and large the supply of labour is not at present a limiting factor in construction.
Our main difficulty concerns the short supply of certain materials and components. The switchover from war to peacetime production has steadily proceeded since the middle of last year and in many items there has been a marked increase in quantity of production. Take bricks for example. Before the war the output of bricks in Scotland was about


56 million a month. But during the war brickmaking came to a virtual standstill and in July, 1945, the output was down to as low as some nine million a month. This state of affairs demanded vigorous action, and the Joint Under-Secretary of State set about arranging for the reopening of closed brickfields and an increase in the supply of brickmaking labour, with the result that the monthly output has steadily increased. In August, 1946, it reached 45 million, and production is still increasing. In recent months, to augment the supply still further, five million bricks a month have been imported from England and supplies are also coming from Belgium. The total monthly supply available for building is now very close to the prewar figure of 56 million bricks per month. But although everything possible is being done by the Ministries of Supply and Works to improve supplies, there are grave shortages of essential materials, such as paint, timber, plaster and plasterboard, light castings, steel windows and electrical components. It is these shortages which are retarding the completion of many permanent houses at the present time. In fact if it were not for the progress we are making in housing, there would be no bottlenecks. It is the fact that we are making progress which in itself creates some of the bottlenecks in some of the components. [Interruption.] There were no bottlenecks in the first four years after the 1914–18 war. So few houses were built then that there were no bottlenecks. The bottlenecks occur now because we are building houses. I am not here to apologise in connection with our programme and work. I am here to explain the facts, and then the criticisms from either side of the House can be based on the facts which I submit to hon. Members.

Mr. Maclay: Will the Secretary of State add glass to the list? I noticed that he did not mention glass, which is desperately short.

Mr. Westwood: I believe glass is short. I know there is a difficulty in the hon. Member's constituency, a constituency that gives me a good point in connection with progress in housing. I went up there to open some aluminium houses. What did I discover? In the 20 years prior to the war, the town of Arbroath built altogether 712 houses. When I went up there to open the aluminium houses, they had

either built, or the building orders had been approved for, 717 houses, five houses more than had been built in that town during the 20 years between the two wars.

Mr. Maclay: Will the right hon. Gentleman agree that that reflects the greatest credit on the local authorities?

Mr. Westwood: Yes, and the assistance given by the Secretary of State and the Joint Under-Secretary of State. No one would be more ready to admit that than the town council of Arbroath.

Mr. Maclay: So do I.

Mr. Westwood: Thank you. In the circumstances, we recently considered what steps, in addition to those which the Supply Departments are seeking to increase the supply of essential materials and components, it is possible to take to get an early increase in the number of houses completed. This can best be achieved by concentrating on those houses which are in an advanced stage of construction. Our records show that of the 22,371 houses now being built, over 7,200 were at or beyond the wallhead level on 20th September; many indeed are roofed over and complete except for some internal fittings. We have, therefore, decided to give these houses super-priority in the supply of materials and components, and where necessary of labour, in an effort to complete them by the end of the year.
For this purpose we are pin-pointing these particular houses and are arranging that such labour and materials as are required to finish them will be specially allocated from local or other sources. We shall give the same super-priority to non-traditional types at the various stages of construction since, with an adequate supply of labour and materials, these are specially capable of rapid completion on the sites. In furtherance of this campaign the Joint Under-Secretary has already had meetings with the associations of local authorities, with the building trades employers, and with representatives of the building materials distributive trades, all of whom have promised their wholehearted cooperation in this campaign. The Joint Under-Secretary is to have similar meetings in Glasgow tomorrow with representatives of the building trades operatives and with manufacturers to enlist their wholehearted support. We shall do everything we can by these special measures to secure the same


kind of improvement in the completion of permanent houses as is now taking place in the erection of temporary houses, so that the maximum additional accommodation may be made available to the people of Scotland in the shortest space of time.
I should like now to say a few words in connection with the permanent non-traditional type of houses that we are building. Apart from the measures to which I have already referred, we have now reached the stage when we may reasonably expect to reap the benefits of the plans laid during the past year to encourage the building of permanent houses of non-traditional types in supplementation of the ordinary brick construction. We can never solve our housing problem in Scotland in a reasonable period if we are to depend wholly and solely upon the traditional methods of building. Our problem is too great; we need, as pointed out by the Housing Advisory Committee, no less than 500,000 houses. That means that we have to bring all forms of construction into operation if we are, as I have already indicated, to solve within a reasonable time what is one of the greatest, in fact, I believe, the greatest, of the social problems that face us in Scotland at the present time. Our aim has been to tap all methods of building and all resources of labour and materials so as to obtain the greatest possible contribution to house production. I am sure it will be of interest to the House to know that of the 54,227 houses for which tenders have been approved or central orders placed no less than 18,105, or roughly one-third of the total, are to be built by alternative methods. These include the use of timber, steel, concrete, combinations of steel and concrete, foam slag, and so on. In fact, we are building 15 different types of these non-traditional forms of houses in Scotland at the present time.
Preliminary arrangements for the examination of plans, thorough laboratory tests, the tooling up of factories, and the placing of contracts, necessarily took some time, and in some cases, I admit, progress was not as fast as we had hoped. We have, however, had regular meetings with the sponsors in order to hasten their preparations, and I am glad to say that the building stage has now been reached in an increasing number of types. As I have already indicated we are working on 15 different types in Scotland at the

present time. For example the Atholl scheme of 1,600 steel houses is well under way; we hope to finish the great bulk of the 2,500 Swedish timber houses in the course of the campaign of which I spoke earlier; building has now started under the British Iron and Steel Federation and Weir steel housing programmes, and a start has now been made with the first of the Cruden houses, which have been specially designed for erection in the rural areas to enable us to help solve the problem of rural housing. I know that will be stressed here in the Debate today and I can assure my colleagues on both sides of the House that the Joint Undersecretary and myself are just as keenly interested in trying to help the rural areas in connection with houses as we are to help the urban areas. We know these problems and we want to try to the best of our ability and, in the light of the experience we have gained, to afford any assistance we can to enable rural authorities to face their housing problems.

Mr. Snadden: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman a question with regard to rural areas? What kind of delivery is being given in regard to the Swedish timber house? Is the delivery quick? The local authorities seem to be uncertain when they will receive delivery.

Mr. Westwood: To the best of my knowledge all the Swedish houses have been delivered with possibly two or three exceptions. Some of the difficulty has been in the completion of these houses because of the shortage of component parts. However, if we adhere to the usual rule which applies in connection with Scottish Debates, the maximum number of hon. Members will get in and the Joint Undersecretary will deal with any of these points that may help.

Mr. Stephen: Could the Minister say how many have been put up in Glasgow in the last year?

Mr. Westwood: Two hundred in Glasgow, and a total of 2,500 for Scotland as a whole.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: Would the Minister give an explanation of what he said earlier? He told the House that the Cruden house had been started. Does that mean started in the factory, or is a house going up in some part of rural Scotland?

Mr. Westwood: I have already pointed out that the Joint Under-Secretary will take up these points and deal with them as they are put by hon. Members. I have said that work is going on in connection with the Cruden house and I cannot make it any clearer than that. Building has now started under the British Iron and Steel Federation and Weir steel house programmes and a start has been made with the first of the Cruden houses which have been specially designed, as I have already indicated, for erection in rural areas and small burghs. All these activities will be increasingly reflected in a growing number of houses under construction and completed. During the initial stages of development the prices of these non-traditional houses are necessarily higher than those of houses of similar size built in brick, but where the difference is substantial a special additional subsidy will be paid to the local authorities under the Act which was passed earlier this year. We are making it perfectly clear to the sponsors of these new methods, however, that if they hope to get further contracts they must show that their prices compete with the current cost of brick houses. In addition, now that we have achieved a fairly broad spread of housing contracts and have got the building industry going in most districts, we shall do everything we can to get prices down generally. Following an upward trend, which took place at the beginning of the war in respect of tenders, prices have remained comparatively steady during the past few months.

Commander Galbraith: Can the Minister indicate what they are?

Mr. Westwood: Yes, they are round about £1,150 and up to £1,300, for the non-traditional type of house. They cannot continue at their present high level indefinitely. If we should think it necessary to refuse approval in any particular case because tenders are higher than we think they should be, I hope that local authorities will give us their full support.
Now I would say a word about squatting. The matter has already been raised in its application to England during Question time earlier today. The House will no doubt expect me to indicate the position in Scotland with regard to this matter, which has exercised the public mind in recent weeks. The movement began in August. It rapidly spread to

various Service camps. The latest figures that I have show that possession has been taken of 143 camps and that some 6,800 persons are involved. The first step we took was to safeguard the public health. We asked local authorities immediately to ensure that water, drainage, lighting and other essential services were made available in the camps in question. Without exception, local authorities cooperated and made the necessary arrangements. We then set up a committee of officials representative of the Service and civil Departments concerned and asked it to examine the position in relation to each camp. On the basis of those inquiries we have asked local authorities to take over, to equip and to manage those camps which are occupied by squatters and for which the Government have no further use, or which will not be required for some time by the holding Departments. Negotiations with the local authorities on this aspect of the matter are not yet complete. They are proceeding. A small number of camps will be required for important reconstruction purposes such as the training of building craftsmen. In such cases, the squatters will have to vacate the accommodation they now occupy, but we will make every possible effort in the first place to find alternative accommodation for them.
While the Government were prepared to make those arrangements for the occupation by squatters of Service camps surplus to requirements, we were not prepared to condone unauthorised occupation of private premises. Accordingly, when the movement spread in September to the occupation of such premises, we made it clear that such occupation constituted a violation of both the civil and the criminal law, and that persons who took up illegal occupation were liable to eviction at the instance of owners and, on conviction under the Trespass (Scotland) Act. to a fine or to imprisonment. The warning seems to have had the desired effect. The movement as a whole seems to have spent its force. Very few new cases have been reported in recent weeks.

Mr. Stephen: How many prosecutions have taken place?

Mr. Westwood: I cannot say offhand but we will try to get the information for the hon. Member before the end of the Debate.
I want to emphasise in the strongest possible terms the urgency of the steps, which we are taking to build the maximum accommodation, both temporary and permanent, at the earliest possible date. Local authorities and the Government have already placed with the industry contracts for 54,227 permanent houses and 32,000 temporary houses, making a total for Scotland of 86,227 houses in all. I hope that no one will accuse me during the Debate as I have already been accused. It has been suggested that at some time or other I said that we should have 20,000 houses finished in the first year after the war. I have no recollection of having said anywhere at any time that we should finish 20,000 houses.

Mr. J. S. C. Reid: Does not the right hon. Gentleman read the newspapers?

Mr. Westwood: Yes, but what the papers say is not always true. I am very careful in the statements which I make. Both in the days of the Coalition Government, and after I had accepted responsibility as Secretary of State for Scotland, I always stated that out of the 300,000 houses which we were likely to get for Great Britain in the first two years after the war, 20,000 had been allocated to Scotland for the first year and 30,000 for the second year. I said they would either be built or building. I never used the word "finished." I have no apology to make about the figures that I have given, in view of all the difficulties. They are far better than those of the Conservative Party ever were when they were in office. We have made it possible by our programme and our legislation, to provide accommodation for the newly married couples. That was denied in Conservative legislation. It was they who made it impossible to provide houses for the general needs of the population. It is just as well that in this House, as well as in the country, these facts should be driven home.

Mr. Snadden: There are no houses being provided in my constituency.

Mr. Westwood: That is typical of some of the criticism which we get in the Press. I have a cutting here which says, "No houses." If it had said that there were few houses, there might have been some

argument, but, whether it is stated by Members of this House or in any other way, if any people say that there are no houses as a result of our efforts in Scotland, they lie. I am not making an accusation against Members of this House. I have given figures of the houses. [Interruption.] I do not mind giving the name of the paper from which the cutting to which I refer is taken. It is from the "People's Journal," a very reputable journal. Its criticism is typical of the way we are attacked when we are dealing with these problems. We do not object to fair criticism. I am trying to give the facts, which are that 54,227 contracts have been placed with the industry by local authorities and by ourselves for permanent houses, and 32,000 contracts for temporary houses, making a total of 86,227. Difficulties are not wanting, especially in the supply of materials and components, but with good will and determination on all sides much can speedily be done to improve the existing position.
I, therefore, make an earnest appeal to all concerned, including the local authorities, to make a special effort to increase house production to the greatest possible extent in the coming months. I make this appeal to local authorities, employers, operatives, manufacturers, and distributive trades alike. All will have to pull their weight if we are to make real progress in housing. Each section has its contribution to offer. In face of the clamant housing needs of Scotland, I have the right to ask that those efforts should be made in the fullest possible measure by all those who take part in our housing programme.

Mr. Stephen: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman a question about the 86,000 contracts to which he referred? Can he give us any idea when those houses will be available—for instance, will it be by the end of next year?

Mr. Westwood: I am not going to fix a target. I do not know the difficulties that may stand in the way. I have always been very careful about that. I would rather promise to the people of Scotland 10,000 houses and provide 15,000, than promise 25,000 and be able to deliver only 20,000. I cannot, therefore, give a definite promise when they will be completed. We are doing every-


thing possible to speed up production of these houses, and I have given the total figures so tar as contracts are concerned.

Lord John Hope: With reference to the brick shortage which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, is he satisfied that the Government are examining all the possibilities for extending the manufacture of bricks from shale slag?

Mr. Westwood: There were certain experiments carried out in connection with that. I am not sure if the reports indicated whether we could spend the time just now to carry those experiments further and see what success resulted. The hon. Member can rest assured that if he has some point to put to me, I will see that it is examined at once in the interests of housing progress in Scotland.

4.52 p.m.

Mr. J. S. C. Reid: In spite of what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, I charge the Government with having failed, and failed badly, in their housing programme. As the right hon. Gentleman will not recognise his failure, it becomes necessary for us to probe for the reasons for it, because it is only by discovering those reasons that we can discover the remedy. As he will not realise his failure, and will not look for the reasons, he is not very likely to discover the remedy unaided. I was a little astonished by his statement that he had no recollection of having promised 20,000 houses completed in the course of his first year of office. The statement which the country understood to mean that, was given at a Press conference on 24th August, 1945. This habit of Press conferences is perhaps an unfortunate one. Statements made in this House can be cross-examined and frequently are, but at a Press conference we have no knowledge of what was said except what the Press says next morning. I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman's Press officer would have communicated with the newspapers if these newspapers gave a misleading impression of what he had said. I should have thought that that was at least his duty, but so far as I am aware, neither the right hon. Gentleman nor his Press officer ever sent any such correction, and certainly I have seen no references to it in the Press. Let me read what he is reported to have said:

Twenty thousand permanent houses for the first 12 months of office. That is my target, bat I want to exceed it. My difficulty at the present moment is the technical staff.
Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to deal with the fuller programme of 500,000 houses in 10 years. Is it suggested that with regard to the 500,000 the right hon. Gentleman only intended "built or building"? He intended "built." Anybody would have taken it so. I refreshed my memory by reading the whole article only a week ago. The impression anybody would get from the "Scotsman" was that the right hon. Gentleman had undertaken to finish 20,000 houses in the first year. The "Glasgow Herald" was even clearer. Let me read a few words of what the right hon. Gentleman is reported to have said. If he can find a context which takes away the apparent meaning of these words, I should like to hear it. He is reported to have said that he was quite confident that Scotland would be in possession of 20,000 permanent new houses within the next 12 months. He denied that it was merely an optimistic statement. One cannot be in possession of 20,000 new houses unless they are completed, and if the right hon. Gentleman is now going to ride away by saying that he never said that, why did not he or his Press officer correct it at the time? This is no way to treat the people of Scotland —to make an ambiguous statement, allow the people to be misled and keep silent—

Mrs. Jean Mann: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will recollect that at that time there was a promise that 2,500 houses known as Portal houses were coming, and the promise was made by the right hon. Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill). Would not my right hon. Friend have been banking on some of these Portal houses that never materialised?

Mr. Reid: I had more respect for the hon. Lady. I really did think that she knew the difference between a temporary and a permanent house. If she had been listening to what I have been reading, she would have heard references solely to permanent houses. The word "permanent" is used time and time again. The hon. Lady's well-meant intervention completely misfires—

Mr. Westwood: I have no recollection anywhere, at any time, and never in this


House, where my words could be challenged, of saying that we would have finished 20,000 houses in the first year after the war. I have always used the same terms and I repeated them again this afternoon—that they would be built or building. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman can get any quotation from anything I have said in this House to the effect that we would finish 20,000 houses, that might be used as evidence against me.

Mr. Reid: This is a most odd business. The House was either sitting or about to sit on 24th August, 1945. The right hon. Gentleman chooses to make his pronouncement outside the House and then he complains when we rely on it and says we are only entitled to rely on the pronouncements made in this House. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that unless he is trying to mislead the people of Scotland, he has no right to make ambiguous statements, and allow them to be so presented in the Press as to give a wrong impression and keep silent.

Mr. Westwood: I say without any hesitation that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has no right whatsoever, even in this House, to accuse me of trying to mislead the people of Scotland. When his record is half as good as mine, he will have little cause to make that suggestion.

Mr. Reid: That is an interjection which I do not propose to follow up. Let that be. Let us come to the next pronouncement which was made in this House. It was equally misleading. I refer to a statement made by the right hon. Gentleman on 9th May, 1946. In reply to an interjection by my hon. Friend the Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart), this is what he said:
Yes, permanent houses. I am pleased to report to the House that last week no less than 247 houses were completed. In other words, nine months after the end of the war we have passed the peak figure of weekly production of the years before the war.
Then the right hon. Gentleman made it perfectly plain a little further down that the 247 houses were permanent houses. He referred to:
… the 247 permanent houses."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th May, 1946; Vol. 422, c 1255.]
Now what is the position? It so happens and we have another example of

it this afternoon—that, by a curious coincidence, always the week before the right hon. Gentleman speaks there is a very large output of houses in Scotland. This time there was an output of 247 permanent houses. The impression that anybody would get from his speech on 9th May was not perhaps that 247 were to be produced every week thereafter, but that we had now got well away, that we were now producing as well as we were before the war. He did not go on to explain that this was a freak week, or that it was unlikely to be repeated. Far from it. What has happened since? Throughout the months that have since passed, the average has been not 247 but about 75 —less than one-third; that is to say, since May when the right hon. Gentleman spoke, there has been a rapid and sudden falling away and as yet no improvement. How does he explain that? How does he make that consistent with his optimistic claims this afternoon—247 houses a week represented as the output for Scotland in May, and ever since then down to 75? Is that being candid with the House? I should have thought not. The right hon. Gentleman would do well to consider the implications of some of his statements before he makes them, and to avoid ambiguous statements of this kind, if he wants what he says to be accepted at its face value.
What is the performance of the Government in the first 12 months? No, in 13 months. I will give them an extra one. In 13 months there have been completed 2,617 permanent houses. That is all, and if the right hon. Gentleman takes the extra month about which he has told us this afternoon, the figure is still under 3,000 permanent houses completed in 14 months. By the way, if we can have the figures today for 2nd October from the right hon. Gentleman, why do we have to wait a month always for the annual return? If they can be got out in 10 days, why are they not always ready in a fortnight instead of a month? Are we always to be dragged at the tail of England?

Mr. Scollan: We wait for England.

Mr. Reid: Really, that is a shocking statement. Because England cannot get its report out in less than a month, this


has to be kept in a pigeon hole, and Scotland kept in ignorance about Scottish affairs. Really, I am surprised at the attitude of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Seotland on that.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Buchanan): I never said a word.

Mr. Reid: Somebody did. I thought it was the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Buchanan: Really, the right hon. and learned Gentleman must not think. I did not even nod my head.

Mr. Reid: The words "We wait for England" came from that part of the House. I heard them clearly.

Mr. Buchanan: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is much too suspicious. I am glad he is not my judge.

Mr. Scollan: I interjected in reference to the point that the English people had tied us to the tail of England. What is the right hon. and learned Gentleman complaining about?

Mr. Reid: I am complaining about the fact that we have not any houses, and I am trying to find out why. I am complaining on this particular point, that if Scottish figures are ready within a fortnight, why should we have to wait a month to see them, simply because the English figures are not ready?

Mrs. Jean Mann: It is houses we want, not reports.

Mr. Reid: But returns may enable us to get houses. They may enable us to find out what is wrong with the Government, and to prod them on a bit. Anyway, there does not seem to be any other way of making them get a move on. I wonder what the right hon. Gentleman meant when he talked at that Press conference about Swedish houses. He told us then that in addition to the programme for permanent houses, there was a programme to provide 2,500 Swedish timber houses by January, 1946. He did not say "built or building" there. Perhaps he meant it, but, again, he was reported in such a way that the ordinary reader would anticipate that they would be ready. What has happened? They have all been standing about waiting for fitments for months and months and, I pre-

sume, deteriorating. Really, Socialist planning which cannot keep the programme in step is a pretty queer kind of planning. What has been wrong in this past year, quite obviously, is the slow progress once a house is started. We were told in the summer that it took eight months to put up a temporary house. It is obvious that the Swedish houses have taken about just as much as that.

Mr. Buchanan: Longer.

Mr. Reid: Longer perhaps, but the permanent houses are even worse. The last Government left under construction in July, 1945, 3,832 houses. Of those houses, in a period of very nearly a year up to 5th July, 1946, only 1,930 had been completed, which is almost exactly half. So that in a year, the Government have only completed half the houses they received under construction, and a great many of them—unless this drive about which I shall say a word in a moment is successful—will have to stand for two winters uncompleted. Why is that? It is not labour. We agree on that. The hon. Gentleman told us a month ago, and the right hon. Gentleman has told us again now, that the labour force is greater than it was prewar. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman, who is chiefly concerned with housing in Scotland, has done too well: he has a lot of men hanging about with nothing to do because his colleagues will not give him materials. If there is to be any kind of plan, surely you want to keep in step, and it is not a bit of good the hon. Gentleman congratulating himself that he has got a big labour force together if they have nothing to do. This is just an example of Socialist co-ordination. Each Department apparently sets out to do the best for itself without any regard to what the others are doing. What is the good of increasing the labour force when you know your colleagues cannot produce the material with which to build.
The right hon. Gentleman has admitted quite frankly that there are great shortages, and most of those shortages could have been remedied perfectly well by this Government if they had carried out their plans. At least, one assumes that before they started on this housing drive they really had some plans. I do not mean merely that the Scottish Office had plans for building houses. I presume the Scottish Office inquired of the Ministries of Works and Labour whether they had


plans for producing the material, and I presume that the other offices assured the right hon. Gentleman that they had such plans. I will say this to the right hon. Gentleman, that I do not think he is the real culprit here. The real culprits appear to be his colleagues who have misled him—unless, of course, he did not take the trouble to inquire of them. I do not know whether he did, but I expect he did, and, therefore, I think his colleagues are the real culprits.

Mr. Scollan: That is the English side of the problem.

Mr. Reid: I thought we were still in the United Kingdom. I am not in the least concerned whether we are let down by English or Scottish Members of the Government. What I am concerned with is this system of Socialistic work, because they cannot carry out their plans.

Mr. Scollan: That is not Socialism. It is rheumatism the right hon. and learned Gentleman is talking about.

Mr. Reid: The hon. Gentleman seems to have described some of his friends most admirably. It is clear that some of the shortages could have been remedied fairly simply. It is fairly clear that if some of the right hon. Gentleman's colleagues had been more alive about buying materials abroad, they could have prevented quite a few of these shortages, but, of course, owing to unskilful buying, and owing to the Treasury thinking that the people of this country prefer films to houses, we have been deprived of a number of raw materials. The right hon. Gentleman sits there as representing the Government in his collective responsibility. The people of Scotland will not acquit the Government of spending tens of millions on films, and failing to buy housing components, which they could have bought otherwise with the dollars concerned.
Most of the troubles are arising out of labour shortages. I would like to remind the House that those labour shortages are only shortages in particular industries. It is now the case that there are more people in this country working on orders for the home market than there were before the war What is wrong is maldistribution. I thought this Government came into office to set up a planned economy. What has happened? The high priority industries which ought to have had the surplus

labour are now vastly undermanned. Labour has drifted away to industries of less high priority. The Government are maintaining an increase in the Civil Service of from 400,000 to 700,000 people. How can this Government say that it is moving into a sphere of planned economy, when it makes such obvious and glaring mistakes as to so adjust the labour situation that the bulk of the labour increases go into non-essential industries while essential industries, such as building components, are starving? Brickworks have only about 72 per cent. of the labour they had prewar. That is the first essential before we can get what the right hon. Gentleman says is our first need in Scotland—houses.
The Government must face this. Either they are incapable of making a plan, or are incapable of carrying it out. It looks as if the view we have held for a very long time, that Socialist planning cannot be carried out without direction of labour, is true. Very rightly, the Government are refraining from an undue exercise of that power because the people would not stand for it, but I do not think it will be very long before hon. and right hon. Members opposite begin to realise that this system of theirs is breaking down because they cannot act ruthlessly enough to make it work. I do not think it would work very well if they did, but it will not work otherwise. I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman might think again, and might perhaps revert for a little while to planning by those who carry on the industry and who produce the goods; in other words, free enterprise. If he cannot manage to plan better than this, what about giving someone else a chance? What about trying to loosen up and enable people to exercise their own skill and initiative without too much control? I do not want to stray too far in that direction, but it does alarm me to see the slow progress which is being made.
The rate of completion of houses has not increased materially in the last four months. It is still round about 300 per month, and the right hon. Gentleman has not led us to believe that there is going to be any great increase. It is true he is to divert labour and material in making a show with these 7,000 houses, but is that going to help in the long run, or is it a little window dressing? I hope the hon. Member who is to reply will be able to


relieve our fears in this matter. If, side by side, there is a house well on the way to completion and a house just started, and, without undue diversion of labour and materials from one part of the country to another, one can concentrate on the one which is nearly ready in order to keep the winter rains out, that is common sense. But I have heard rumours, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will deny them, that building labour and material are being diverted altogether to quite different parts of the country.

Mr. Buchanan: Mr. Buchanan indicated dissent.

Mr. Reid: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will be able to give us a little more information about this diversion, but he has made such a point of it, that it seems to be a major military operation.

Mr. Buchanan: Mr. Buchanan indicated dissent.

Mr. Reid: I do not know why such a point has been made of it.

Mr. Buchanan: I have not made much of it.

Mr. Reid: There has been a suspicious unanimity in the Press about it, and it would seem that whoever conducts his publicity, understands that this is a big point.

Mr. Buchanan: I have not done much about it. I met the Press one morning and talked to them about it. Apart from that, I have done no advertising about it. I have met local authorities. Pressmen want news, and get it, but I never went after the Press, apart from the one occasion when I met them.

Mr. Reid: I do not know what the hon. Gentleman's Press department is doing about this matter. It seems odd, if he does not attach much importance to it, that a good deal has been made of it. However, if there is nothing in it, I will not take the matter further.

Mr. Buchanan: I have not gone out to the Press.

Mr. Reid: We have an understanding that we should not speak for too long. Although there are a number of other topics with which I would like to deal, I think that as many hon. Members representing Scottish constituencies as possible should speak on these occasions. I hope

that if this Debate serves no other purpose, it will at least have disturbed the optimistic frame of mind of the right hon. Gentleman. Until he gets rid of this false optimism, he is not likely to learn from his own mistakes. One can respect a man who recognises his mistakes and learns from them, but if the right hon. Gentleman denies his mistakes, he will not learn from them.

5.17 p.m.

Mr. Mathers: 7: There has been a marked difference between the speeches from the two Front Benches. I do not wish to comment to any extent on the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Hillhead (Mr. J. S. C. Reid), but it is justifiable for me to spend a minute or two in examining what he said. The gravamen of his charge was made in practically his first sentence, that the Government had failed, and failed badly. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has shown that in roughly 13 months the Government have finished 12,172 houses, adding temporary and permanent houses together.

Commander Galbraith: With private enterprise as well.

Mr. Mathers: Well, 12,172 finished and ready up to 2nd October. That gives us roughly the same period from the end of the 1914–18 war to the end of 1919. My information is that up to the end of 1919, when hon. Members opposite were in power, just as effective power as the Labour Party has now that it is in charge of the affairs of this country, no houses were completed in Scotland for occupation.

Lord William Scott: Will the hon. Member tell us who was the Minister for Housing at that time?

Mr. Mathers: I do not wish to be drawn away into a post-mortem examination in the way the right hon. and learned Member for Hillhead has been. He made another statement to the effect that when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland was to speak there was a boom in house production the week before. It seems to me that all that is necessary in that event is for us to arrange for the Secretary of State for Scotland to speak every week, and have a boom in housing production the week before. The right hon. Gentleman also suggested towards the end of his speech that, if the


Government could not do the job, they should give somebody else a chance. I suppose that those in power at the end of the last war did give somebody else a chance. I have indicated the extent of the success achieved on that occasion. If the record that we have been given today by the Secretary of State for Scotland is an indication of failure, I would say, let him go on failing even more spectacularly than he has done up to the present time. If that kind of failure produces the houses, as it is producing them now, that is, in a steadily growing stream, we shall be very glad indeed that we have in power in this country and in charge of our affairs in Scotland, a Government and a Minister who are failing in a way which is at least producing the houses.
I do not wish to take part to any extent in any cut and thrust of debate on this occasion. I wish to put two points to the Front Bench in the hope that the Joint Under-Secretary, whose duty it will be to reply to the Debate, may possibly give an answer to them. The first is, will he endeavour to make clear here today the present powers of local authorities with regard to requisitioning? There is a certain amount of doubt in the minds of members of local authorities with regard to these powers, because of the effect of a legal decision some time ago. I want to know whether the difficulties in that regard have been resolved, and whether local authorities now know precisely what are their powers and how those powers can be put into effect. The idea previously held was that the local authorities themselves had power directly to requisition empty houses and indeed to work upon them, to build them up, to recondition them and make them much more fit for human habitation than when they took them over. These doubts do exist in the minds of local authorities at the present time, and I would very much like the Joint Undersecretary kindly to devote some part of his reply to making clear the present position.
The other point is, Will he take into consideration the idea of giving some guidance to housing authorities with regard to the method of letting houses once they are available? There is a good deal of heartburning amongst prospective tenants of houses that are being built about the way in which they are, as they consider, being wrongly treated. It would

be valuable if some guidance could be given to the local authorities as to the best methods of exercising their powers in this regard. I know that the final responsibility for the letting of the houses devolves upon the local housing authorities, but it would be useful if the Scottish Office would give some guidance as to the method of applying properly the decision as to who should have the occupancy of the new houses. There is a good deal of concern in this regard, and a good many letters of complaint are written about houses to which people think they have a better right than those who are actually given the tenancy. I know that in the course of time this difficulty will disappear because of the provision of more houses satisfactory to the needs of the applicants, but in the meantime there is a strong urge among those who are living under unsatisfactory housing conditions to secure the earliest possible tenancy of houses. I hope that some guidance may be given by the Secretary of State to the local authorities as to how best to proceed in allocating the houses that are produced. I know that in providing that kind of guidance he will give authoritatively a good deal of satisfaction to those who will be able to calculate when they are likely to get houses in comparison with other people. I believe that it would be very helpful to local authorities to have something authoritative from him along those lines to guide them in the use of their housing powers.

5.27 p.m.

Mr. Spence: I wish to address myself particularly to the question of the shortage of materials for the building of houses, to which attention has been called by all speakers and of which all Members of the House are well aware. The most outstanding case of houses that have been waiting for materials to enable them to be completed for habitation is that of the Swedish houses. There are a very large number of them all over rural Scotland and in the towns, and almost without exception they are waiting for fittings, either electrical or in the form of windows, to enable them to be made habitable. I consider that the trouble has been that when these houses were originally ordered the proper priorities were not given to the factories through-


out the country to enable the fittings to be made ready, waiting for them.
We have various national priorities today. There are housing, the export drive, the home market. I consider that of these, housing should have absolute priority, and I should like to direct the attention of the Secretary of State to export figures of products the need for which is holding up the completion of houses. In the case of electrical goods and apparatus, we have this year exported £23 million worth. In the case of insulated wires, of which there is a big shortage, we have already this year exported £6,700,000 worth. In the case of sheet glass, which is a crying need, we have exported £1,640,000 worth. These figures are roughly two to three times as big as those in the same comparable period of months in 1938. It seems obvious, on the face of it, that there is a lack of coordination at the top. The export drive is being pushed by the Board of Trade and it seems that the Minister of Supply and the Minister of Works are not coordinating the needs of builders and seeing that industry shall supply houses first and the export trade second. I believe that priority should be given to our housing. Our industrial revival and well-being depends on good housing for the people. The question of window frames was mentioned. It was said that window frames and metal casements were holding up the erection of houses. We find that £282,000 worth of metal casements and window frames have gone abroad this year.

Mr. Buchanan: Would the hon. Member state the period he is quoting?

Mr. Spence: I am quoting from the Trade and Navigation Returns for the period from 1st January, 1946, to date. Apart from the question of material shortages, I think the greatest aspect of the housing progress is neglect of the question of rural housing. Those of us who represent rural constituencies find that men are coming back from the Forces, getting married, and that there are no houses for them. There is no housing development proceeding on the farms and these people tend to drift to the towns. That is a tendency which, in our national interests, must be checked. Somehow, a remedy must be found. As a temporary expedient, I suggest to the Secretary of State that he might consider ways and means by which new unorthodox perma-

nent houses might be made available to the private individual on some reasonably economic financial basis. Unless we get houses on our farms fairly soon, we will have a continuing and growing drift of people from the country to the towns, with a consequent effect on agriculture.
In this connection, I think the Cruden house, with its comparatively simple method of construction and ready availability of material, is one that could well be used. It is a house which, I believe, will have a great future. Hon. Members may not know that it is made of comparatively thin grooved and tongued concrete slabs carried in pressed cold rolled steel metal frames. The steel is very light and the whole structure of the house is carried on stanchions instead of on the walls of the house. It can be built with a far less weight of material in it than we have envisaged so far in ordinary forms of construction. Something of this sort must be made available throughout the countryside to the individual. The system to which we are limited at present, whereby the only houses being built in the country are in small groups here and there built by the county authorities, will not cover the case of rural Scotland, especially in the more scattered districts. I beg the Secretary of State to give this matter his attention and to see whether he can find some way of providing a permanent house which can be built on our farms so that the men can live on the job. In that way this drift to the towns would be avoided.
There is one other matter to which I wish to refer whilst on the subject of shortage. I hope the suggestion which I shall make will be found helpful. Sheet lead is in very short supply. I know from my own experience that behind every plumber's shop in Scotland is an enormous heap of scrap lead. I suggest that the Secretary of State should initiate a salvage drive so that the lead may be reclaimed and rolled into sheet. This suggestion has come from the plumbers themselves who find themselves embarrassed by the amount of lead scrap which they have on their premises. They tell me it would help them very much to make progress with the job of roofing and guttering houses if sheet lead was available. Finally, I want again to refer to the question of priority for houses over all other claims. This priority must come before exports, otherwise we will not get houses completed in Scotland in reasonable time.


As the Secretary of State well knows, only four Swedish houses have been completed so far in Aberdeenshire. He came up and opened one himself the other day. In my home town these houses have been standing for months waiting for quite simple fittings, in the main for electrical fittings. I am sure these fittings would have been available if they had not been shipped out of the country. I earnestly beg the Minister to make representations to the Ministries concerned and to ensure that there is proper coordination so that our total effort of production in this country is devoted to the housing of the people and not to the export drive, though that, also, must be considered.

5.36 p.m.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: There are one or two points to which I wish to draw attention during this Debate. I think I am in Order in dealing with the question of expense, the cost to the builder of houses in rural Scotland compared with the cost in England. I hope the Under-Secretary will correct me when he comes to reply if I am wrong. There is nothing contentious about this and I am merely seeking information. I think I am right in saying that if a farmer wants to build a new house for himself even though it is a necessary house, he gets no grant at all in Scotland. On the other hand, in England a similar man would get £15 per annum for 40 years under the Housing Act of 1946. I think the figure was increased from £10 to £15. That seems to be a very unfair differentiation. I do not wish to go into the pros and cons of tied houses, but there is no grant for a tied house for a farm worker in Scotland. Neither is there a grant officially in England. There are, however, so many loopholes in the English Act that it is not very difficult to have a tied house. A man can get over the legal difficulties in several ways. It is not for me to give details of that at this stage. We are discussing rural houses in Scotland. There are no loopholes in the Scottish Act, though there are in the English Act.
In the case of an additional house for a farm worker, not a tied house on this occasion, there is no provision for a grant in Scotland. Again, in England a grant of £15 per annum for 40 years is available. That also is an unfair differentiation. A man who wishes to build a new

house in substitution for an old house in Scotland would get a grant of £240 for a three-roomed type of house and rather more if it was a house of four rooms. In England there is available a grant of £15 per annum for 40 years, a total of £600. This appears to be very unfair to those who wish to improve rural housing conditions in Scotland. There are many other examples which I could instance. My object is to draw attention to the fact that in Scotland we have to pay more than in England for a similar type of house. I hope that the Undersecretary will be able to say that this matter has been raised and that his Department consider that the people who are trying to improve housing conditions in farming communities in Scotland should not be worse off financially than their brothers in England. I feel sure that that is accepted as a principle, though at the moment, as the law stands, England is very much better off than Scotland.
In connection with the Housing Return for Scotland issued for the period up to the end of August, I would point out that houses built by private enterprise, unassisted, have made a much greater increase proportionately compared with the number of permanent houses built and under construction by the local authorities. There is an increase of something like one-sixth in private enterprise unassisted building, as against an increase of only one-tenth in local authority building. There must be a good reason for that, because the private enterprise builder gets precious little encouragement and yet still seems to be able to do better, proportionately, than the local authorities.

Mr. Buchanan: I have not followed the hon. and gallant Gentleman's figures. Will he go over them again, as I did not quite catch them?

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Private enterprise, at the end of August, according to Table V of the Housing Return, had completed, since 1st January, 309 houses, and the similar figure at the end of July was 250. That shows an increase. The figures for permanent houses completed by local authorities were 3,281 at 31st August, against 2,978 in July. The proportion, as I think the hon. Gentleman will agree, is a little unbalanced.

Mr. Buchanan: May I just put the hon. Gentleman's figures right? I speak from


memory, but private enterprise has completed 317 houses—that is the total of completions—whereas local authorities have completed well over 3,000. Those are the facts. We cannot take the figures month by month, but must compare them over a period.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: With great respect, I thank the hon. Gentleman for those figures, but I am talking of the increase over last month.

Mr. Buchanan: The hon. and gallant Gentleman cannot take it over a month.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: On the contrary, I can take it over a month, and, now that the hon. Gentleman has emphasised that point, no doubt he will deal with it fully when he replies. Another point to which I wish to draw attention concerns the question of the export trade, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Central Aberdeen (Mr. Spence) has already referred. We are all well aware that the export trade must be boosted up for all it is worth, but I feel that the necessity of housing is far greater even than that of the export trade, and that this over-emphasis of the export trade against the home market, in relation to housing, is a very serious thing at this stage. I recall that the Minister of Health not so long ago could write in a book that this over-emphasis of the export trade as against the home market was "a twist of the Tory mind." I think that this twist has gone in other directions now, and that it certainly cannot be laid at the door of the Tories on this occasion. The Board of Trade should be told quite clearly by the Secretary of State for Scotland that they are not getting enough stuff for housing, which is so essential in Scotland, and that they are providing rather too much for export.
My final point is in connection with the situation in rural Scotland. Here, the housing situation is still deplorable, and I can see no sign of it becoming anything else. I do not want to go into the question of the tied house, which was discussed yesterday, but I do feel that we must realise that, unless we get the houses actually on the farms and up the glens where the men have got to work, these farms will become derelict in a very short time. It is no use saying that there will be a village community 10 miles down the glen when we know that no

fellow will go 10 miles either on foot or on a bicycle every day. The houses must be on the spot in these areas, and that is where, so far, we have seen no sign of them at all. The situation is very serious, and I beg of the hon. Gentleman te tell us more today about what he is going to do in dealing with housing in the rural parts of Scotland.

5.44 p.m.

Mr. Timmons: I want to compliment my right hon. Friend on the progress he has made up to now, and, in doing that, I want to point out one or two factors which have been militating against a further increase in completed houses. I regret that the Minister of Works is not here—

Mr. Buchanan: My right hon. Friend was here, but he has gone.

Mr. Timmons: I remember that, in the last housing Debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbartonshire (Mr. McKinlay) gave a word of advice to the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench and said that, if they wanted to make progress in housing in Scotland, the first thing they would require to do would be to get rid of the Ministry of Works, lock, stock and barrel. My own experience, over a lengthy period, makes me feel like reiterating that advice to my hon. Friends, and I ask them to take steps to make some arrangements whereby the Ministry of Works is made to do the job or clear out of Scotland in order that some progress can be made in housing.
I will give some experiences which I have had in dealing with the Ministry of Works. A firm came up into my division to build houses rather more than a year ago. Every obstacle that could be put in the way of that firm in their efforts to find storage accommodation was placed in their way. In spite of the number of appeals which were made to the Ministry, not one square foot of storage space was provided until a few months ago, when I took up the matter with the Department in Edinburgh. Even today they have not got the accommodation they require. This has been going on continuously for a period of nine months. But that is not the worst of it.
About six months ago, I had occasion to go to the Department to see the Undersecretary of State, representatives from


the Ministry of Works, representatives of that firm and some of the officials from the Scottish Office, and I remember that, after we had discussed the question of storage space, we got down to discuss another important matter concerning the site for a few hundred temporary houses which had been serviced and sent along to the Ministry of Works for delivery. I remember very well that my right hon. Friend did not know about it at the time, but later found out that it was perfectly true. Tentative arrangements were made with the representative of the firm of Tarran to slab the site and to erect the houses, and it was only a question of taking them from one side of the village to another. Two weeks later, what happened? We got an intimation from my right hon. Friend that that arrangement had been cancelled and that the site had been declared suitable for aluminium houses. The Lanarkshire County Council have a big number of sites ready serviced, with everything waiting but no houses coming along, and there will be no delivery of aluminium houses up to the end of this year.
I had occasion to go to Glasgow last week, and I went to the headquarters of the Lanarkshire County Council to check up and to make inquiries about a place called Forth, which had been given an allocation of 119 houses to be erected on a site which had been ready for a considerable time. The excuse of the Ministry of Works was that the contractors could not find accommodation for their workers. In that same place, there is a hostel which was built for Bevin Boys and which has never seen a boy in it since it was built. No serious attempt was made by the Ministry of Works to find accommodation for the workers, and so they could not build the houses in that area. These are some of the things we have had to contend with in our experiences with the Ministry of Works.
I wish to mention another matter in relation to this question. At Bellshill, we have been hoping to get delivery of our houses by the end of this year. Thai promise of delivery was based on an estimate that, by the month of September, the works would be producing 250 of these houses per month. I understand from my hon. Friend tonight that they have now completed 100 per week. The Lanarkshire County Council is to get

something like 1,500 aluminium type houses and, in the meantime, further sites are being prepared. But we have 1,200 young people living in sub-let rooms in Bellshill with no prospect of a home of their own in the immediate future. Not one temporary house has been erected, and there is every reason for the young people to complain about the lack of progress made. I do not blame my hon. Friend in the least; I know the fight that he has put up in an attempt to help us in the matter. The fault is entirely due to the officials at the Ministry of Works. Had they been present, I would have appealed to them to clear out of the place entirely in order that progress can be made in Scotland. There are a number of sites ready and the firm engaged in building temporary houses, which employs over 700 of our people in Bellshill, has got to stop work and may be compelled to pay off 200 men because it has 450 temporary houses ready for delivery and the Ministry of Works say there are no sites available.
What progress has been made in relation to the proposed permanent houses? The Tarran Company have been building a certain type of permanent house somewhere in the North of England, but the same house, when it comes to Scotland, is not accepted until the bathroom is moved from upstairs to downstairs.

Mr. Buchanan: Some six months ago an hon. Member for one of the Hull Divisions wrote to me asking if I would make a site ready for this company to erect a prototype house. Six months ago I wrote to the firm, after consulting the Glasgow Town Council and the Housing Association, offering them a site. Both the Glasgow Town Council and the Housing Association have heard nothing further from that firm.

Mr. Timmons: I remember that in the early part of this year a question was put by my hon. Friend the Member for Coat-bridge (Mrs. Mann) about the Weir factory. I understand that they were to be in production by June. A few months ago I visited that factory and there was no immediate likelihood of production. They told me that they would be producing up to 50 houses a week in September. It is now October and I do not know whether there has been any production to date or whether there is likely to be any.

Mrs. Mann: May I say that there is production? There are over 200 workers and they have been working for over a month. I wish that my hon. Friend would make himself a little more conversant with the situation. May I also say that it is private enterprise.

Mr. Timmons: I am asking for information and the Under-Secretary of State ought to be able to inform me on these matters. No doubt I shall get the information I require when he speaks at the close of the Debate. I also want to know whether this firm is being financed by the Government, and to what extent. Can the Under-Secretary tell me what progress has been made with the Iron and Steel Confederation houses, and whether we are likely to get them? Are we going to be in the position of having sufficient supplies of steel? Labour trouble has developed in Lanarkshire and production has again declined. I wish to appeal to the Minister of Works to go to the Edinburgh Office and make a thorough reorganisation and a proper clean-out, and to get more cooperation between the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Supply, and the Under-Secretary of State who is responsible for getting the houses.

5.55 p.m.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: If what the hon. Member for Bothwell (Mr. Timmons) has said about the office of the Ministry of Works in Edinburgh is true, then it serves only to confirm and emphasise the case I have been making to the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the past year—that Scottish housing is handicapped partly, but nevertheless seriously, by the multiplicity of directing heads. The hon. Gentleman has repeatedly denied that charge and said that he has complete control. The hon. Member for Bothwell does not think so, and he, apparently, speaks with a considerable personal knowledge of the matter. It is surely evident to the country that, if there is not only the Secretary of State, but also the Minister of Supply, the Minister of Works, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Minister of Health—the Chairman of the Government's Housing Committee—all sitting, coping and dealing with, arguing and discussing Scottish housing affairs, we are not likely to get the progress we desire. I hope the hon.

Member for Bothwell succeeds: I confess I have failed badly in trying to persuade the Joint Under-Secretary of State.
Some time ago I tried another approach. On the advice of the very progressive Fife County Council, on which there are a great many Labour men and many Communists, I have, time after time, urged upon the Under-Secretary of State, in this House, the desirability of short circuiting his administrative machine. I gave him figures which proved that the present method involved inordinate and completely unnecessary delay. He denied that it existed and said that, even if it did, it was impossible to alter it. I did not like to tell him that that was nonsense. Under still further pressure and a good deal of publicity in Fife, the hon. Gentleman at last condescended to look at the Fife case. As a result it was proved, even to him— and he is a very stubborn person when he makes up his mind—that the system was bad. Under pressure, he altered it, and I am assured by the Fife County Clerk and his progressive council that the number of steps in the process of getting a house approved and built has been reduced from well over 100 to something well under 30. Hon. Members will see that that sort of thing is undoubtedly delaying matters.
The Secretary of State in his opening speech said he had nothing to apologise for. There was no penitence, no case for excusing himself. I thought his perky self-satisfaction somewhat nauseating in the present desperate housing situation. Perky satisfaction is not suited to the times. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman misleads himself as he misleads the country and the House from time to time. On a former occasion in May he undoubtedly misled the House; I was able to look up the figures and proved that the statement that the right hon. Gentleman had made was utterly false. One thing I noticed today was that the right hon. Gentleman did not promise any large undertakings for the future. That struck me as rather strange, because the chairman of the Government's housing committee has made such a pledge. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman if the pledge which was made for England applies to Scotland also. This is the pledge given by the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health yesterday:
I give this promise, that by the next General Election"—


that is, 3½ years ahead, not very far away—
there will be no housing shortage so far as the mass of the British people are concerned.
The Minister of Health has said time and time again that he would not make promises, but in recent months in fact he keeps on making promises. Those words that I have just read constitute a promise. Does that promise apply to Scotland? Perhaps when the Undersecretary of State replies he will tell us whether the Socialist Government's promise to England will also apply to Scotland.

Mr. Buchanan: The point is this. I pledge myself, and nobody else will pledge it for me.

Mr. Stewart: Let us get this clear. Whereas England can be sure that in 3½ years' time its housing problem will be solved, no such possibility exists for Scotland. I ask hon. Members opposite to say if I am wrong in that. Will somebody please deny it? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] It is not denied by anybody in the Government. It is not denied by the Minister. So we may take it the housing shortage will not be met in 3½ years' time in Scotland, whereas in England it will be. I will tell the House why there is likely to be that strange comparison. The Minister of Health went on to say this yesterday:
It is no use grumbling at the Government. The bricks are on the sites, and the materials are there. The contracts are placed and it is now the job of the builders to build the houses.
I invite the special attention of the House to those words:
The materials are there"—
in England. The whole burden of the complaint of the Secretary of State today was that they are not in Scotland. Why are they not in Scotland? Let us have a little inquiry into this matter, because this is vital. The Secretary of State has shown that he has now as many bricks as he had before the war. The output of bricks is as high as it was in 1939. He declared too that there are now more men employed in building than ever before. He has bricks, men, the administrative machinery and the whole paraphernalia of Socialist planned inspiration but not the materials.
I would like to tell the House of a case in Cupar, Fife, where there were two building schemes. One is a brick built scheme operated by the Local Authority and the other a scheme for the erection of prefabricated houses undertaken by the Ministry of Works. When I visited the sites a few weeks ago the brick scheme was going ahead step by step, well planned and with no delays. Everybody was working and there was not an idle man on the site. What happened on the other job? The Cupar Council were cajoled into accepting these temporary prefabricated houses on the gorund that it was a quick job. What a tragedy. I found there was stagnation. The floors, roofs and sides had come, but vital parts had been forgotten. There was no plumbing units, no pipes, and other vital parts were missing with which the private enterprise buildings had been provided. I am not a bit surprised that there is a shortage of materials. Why is there a shortage of materials in Scotland when, apparently, there is no shortage in England? If the statement of the Minister of Health is accurate—and I suppose it must be taken as accurate—England must be getting all the materials at the expense of Scotland. We do not require to search far for the answer. I have heard it said, and from Government supporters, that the Secretary of State is representing Scotland rather feebly in the councils of the Government. I well believe it. Here is an example of it. He says, almost with tears running down his cheeks, '' I cannot help it. We have not got the materials." But the Minister of Health has got all the materials he wants. Perhaps the Undersecretary of State will be able to enlighten us when he replies.
I suppose one judges a Government not by its words but by its deeds. What are the deeds of this Government? I say nothing about the 20,000 houses mentioned in the promise of the Secretary of State. That is for him to settle with his conscience, and perhaps with the Press, although it struck me as very odd that the Secretary of State should adopt that slippery, un-courageous action of saying, "I was misreported." However, I will let that pass. What has been done in the 13 months of Socialist rule? In the first report which came from the Department of Health we were told that Scotland needed 500,000 houses. That was, apparently, the objective of the Secretary of State. As the


right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Mr. J. S. C. Reid) has said, that appears to be the programme of the Secretary of State. I believe that is a ten years' programme. Now let us look at the production of permanent houses. There are now 3,670 permanent houses which have been completed in the 14 months up to September. That is during the best summer months—

Mr. McKinlay (Dumbartonshire): When were the summer months?

Mr. Stewart: They are supposed to be the best building months. While some parts suffered from rain, Scotland as a whole came off very well. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] The anwer is to be found in the facts. The Scottish harvest is in, but in some parts of England it is not in yet, and Scotland's harvest will be infinitely bigger in proportion than England's harvest, because the weather in Scotland was better. In those summer months, June, July and August, far from the rate of permanent housing going up, it fell. The figures are: June 331, July 308 and August 303. It is an incredible performance. It is true that in September the number seems to have been boosted up to 346, but that is likely to be another freak figure, like the 200-odd figure which was given to me in May. It seems to show that the number of houses built in Scotland will be less than 4,000 per annum, compared with the target figure of 50,000 per annum. I do not think that is anything to be perky about. The local authorities were pressed to get on with the job, to provide sites and to get tenders forward. They did. There are 54,000 tenders, but only 23,000 houses.
I would like to draw the attention of the House to another example of failure. Included in that small number of permanent houses are those built by the Special Housing Association which, I think, was given an immediate target of 10,000 houses—100,000 total and 10,000 at once as a first job. How many houses has this much boosted, Government sponsored, Exchequer paid housing authority produced? During the 13 months they have completed 264 houses; during the month of August the immense total of nine houses; yet they are going to build 10,000 houses. When? God knows. There seems to be no prospect of any advance there.

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: They were the shock troops, too.

Mr. Stewart: The shocking troops, I would say. The temporary housing position is not quite so bad, but it is bad enough. We were promised 32,000 or 33,000 houses in Scotland, were we not? The attraction was speedy production. The local authorities had expected to receive their complete allocation by the end of this year—and why not? Their chief value was supposed to be their readiness. The whole point was speedy production. The position now is that only 6,000 temporary houses have been completed by the Government and handed over to the local authorities. Six thousand instead of 33,000. That is a quarter of the number promised. Here again local authorities have gone ahead as far as they could, only to be hopelessly disappointed. Even in the course of the war years, when house building was very nearly impossible, in Scotland we built 6,000 houses.

Mr. Westwood: Might I just correct the figure? It is quite common for the hon. Member not to give the facts to the House, although I have already given them. The total number of temporary houses which have now been completed is 8,545. That is only about 25 per cent.of my total. Of course, that is typical of National Liberal facts.

Mr. Stewart: I am much obliged for that correction. I was dealing with the figures in this return up to August. The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly right; he did give—and I apologise for not quoting him before—the figure up to 2nd October. His correction is quite right, which I admit, and am glad to admit. I was about to say that during the war, in Scotland 6,000 new houses were built. We are now building at the rate of less than 12,000 in a year, only twice as many as were built in the war. That strikes me as an incredible example of incapacity.
That is the charge I level against this Government: sheer gross incapacity. [Laughter.] There they are, these Socialists: they laugh, they joke, they jeer, they are apparently quite satisfied with their performance. If that is so, then the outlook for Scotland is even blacker than I thought. Not only are they incapable but they seem to be glad


to be incapable, and very proud to be incapable. If this incapacity continues we will suffer very very great strain and distress in many parts of Scotland. It will be particularly so in rural areas. No substantial number of houses have been built anywhere in any county of which I have any knowledge. Apparently a new type of house is to be started —one house! Does that mean one house being built, or one house being created in a factory? One would like to know. I assure hon. Members opposite that they are neglecting a vital activity, and I am not sure that it is not the most important part of any Government's activities.
There is one other question which I want to ask. The Secretary of State, with one of his sorts of asides, indicated that the price of houses ranged from £1,150 permanent to £1,300 of the non-traditional type. Did I catch that correctly?

Mr. Westwood: Mr. Westwood indicated assent.

Mr. Stewart: I wonder if that is a complete answer. My information is that some of these temporary or non-traditional types of houses run to an infinitely higher figure than £1,300. I am told they run to £1,600. Was the right hon. Gentleman giving an average figure, or does he deny that some of them are as high as that?

Mr. Buchanan: Some of them run to very nearly as high as that I do not deny that.

Mr. Stewart: Surely that is an extraordinary situation. We can build brick houses for about a third less than these new types. Apparently we have all the labour to do it; apparently we have all the bricks to do it, and I should have thought we would have had the other materials. In these circumstances is it not the duty of the Government—financial, social and every other kind of duty—to concentrate more, to bring more weight to bear upon traditional brick built houses rather than to play about with these new-fangled ideas? I am in the fortunate position of having attacked temporary houses from the very start, in the time of the last Government. I could almost claim to be the initiator of the attack upon that system. Therefore, I am perfectly consistent in attacking it now. I admit the permanent prefabricated house has pos-

sibilities, but at the moment brick houses go up quicker, they cost less, they are more suited to this country and they are more popular. Why in heaven's name does not the Secretary of State concentrate more upon those instead of fiddling about with all these new ideas, which are obviously costing such an enormous amount of money and producing such very meagre results?
It is a depressing picture that faces us as we look forward to Christmas time. Permanent house building will be still smaller in numbers during the winter months. The prospect is even more gloomy than it was in the summer. I can only ask, with all the sincerity I can command, that the Government will approach this again with a good deal less conceit and self-satisfaction, but with a good deal more readiness to accept the advice of other people, and particularly with readiness to give those people who do understand this business all the encouragement that is possible. Above all, I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State to give the House the plain, unvarnished facts. We are entitled to the plain truth. We are entitled to believe that when a Minister makes a statement and gives an undertaking he stands by it. The Secretary of State has proved himself to have fallen far short of that standard. Unfortunately, having fallen short of that standard himself, all Scotland suffers accordingly.

6.17 p.m.

Mr. McKinlay (Dumbartonshire): I congratulate the hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Stewart) on his comprehensive knowledge of the building industry. When I hear an hon. Member of this House talking about building brick houses cheaper and quicker than he can build houses by any other method, I can only assume it is not only in building that fabrication takes place.

Mr. Stewart: These are figures given by the Secretary of State.

Mr. McKinlay: The hon. Member's well simulated indignation will read remarkably well in East Fife, but so far as this House is concerned it stinks. I want to be quite frank about this. I have been in the building industry long enough to know that eloquent speeches never produce one single house, and that goes for all political parties.

Major Guy Lloyd: Neither do eloquent promises.

Mr. McKinlay: I will deal with the promises. I do not want to offend the hon. and gallant Member for East Renfrew {Major Lloyd), because he is so sensitive. He is blindly sensitive, if I may say so, and I do not want to get into the headlines of his. political commentary. It is an awfully dangerous thing, even for Front Benchers, to indulge in waves of optimism in dealing with this problem. To listen to hon. Members opposite one would think this problem was a creation of the war period. The hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife quotes the number of houses built during the war: six years of war, 6,000 houses. We have a residuum of prewar housing programmes of semi-finished houses; and anything after September, 1939, was a wartime product. I am sure this must tickle my hon. Friends' imagination— 1,500 of them in one fell swoop were built by direct labour; and they were built at Penniles and Hillington for the Ministry of Aircraft Production; and it was the only housing development where no system of payment by results was introduced, and where the output, per bricklayer, was as high as it was per man in the munition factories. But that is a shocking state of affairs.
I did not get up however even to try to follow the well simulated indignation of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hillhead (Mr. J. S. C. Reid). When all is said and done, this Government is not so very old. I remember a prototype house being erected at the back of the Tate Gallery. Did we hear anything about it? It was the Portal house. If I remember correctly, I, as a member of a Committee, was presented with some figures in this Parliament which showed that the Party opposite, that the brilliant son-in-law of a brilliant father-in-law, had committed this country to £50 million worth of components; but the houses upon which they proposed to use the components had never even been started, and most of the fitments were made right and left handed for the wrong places. It has cost this Government thousands of pounds in storage charges trying to hide them from the public. Why the Minister of Works should have been so modest about what happened in the administration of Mr. Duncan Sandys I do not know. They are far too modest.
I think the Minister of Health in England adopted a very good policy when he said he was creating no target. I want to give some advice to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland when he says there are 230,000 sites. The man in the street thinks that is 230,000 areas upon which to build houses; which, of course, is all poppycock. They are 230,000 pieces of land upon each of which one house can go. If I may say so, I think the Glasgow corporation, indeed, are entitled to the credit of having, at least, land for 40,000 houses in their possession and included in those figures. But I wish Front Benchers and Back Benchers, too, would stop talking in astronomical figures about what can be done in the production of houses.

Major Lloyd: The hon. Member should have said that at the Election.

Mr. MacKinlay: If the hon. and gallant Member accuses me of having said those things at the Election, then I can only deny it.

Major Lloyd: On a point of Order. I did not say that. I said the hon. Member ought to have said it. I did not say he said it.

Hon. Members: Oh!

Mr. MeKinlay: Anyone who knows me knows I would not talk such arrant nonsense. Those who do not know me, and believe it, are entitled to their belief. But I have had the chastening experience of having to prepare a programme of 60,000 houses, and that was mainly the responsibility of the Party opposite who, in 1933, declared that the housing problem was solved, and who withdrew the Wheatley Act subsidy, and chased every person who was not qualified for a slum clearance house into the hands of the building societies. Will any hon. Member on the opposite side of the House deny that? It is not a question, however, of who was responsible for creating the problem. It is a question of how best we can solve it. There are some things being accepted as dwelling houses at the moment that never will be dwelling houses. That brings me to the question of what constitutes a temporary house. There is not a single house designated as such, that will not stand for 25 years, and part of the problem in Scotland, at least, is this: that the buildings they did build years


ago, were too strongly and too well built. They outlasted the development of modern society, and we cannot clear them away without spending a fortune.
However, I am departing from what I intended to say. If I may have the attention of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for a minute or two, I want to deal with the Special Housing Association. Hon. Members are aware that there was a reorganisation that took place of this Association, and that its members were asked to tender their resignations. I wonder what the reason was. I feel some responsibility in this matter, because there was, at least, one who was a member on my recommendation. Having declined to serve myself, I recommended one who was, I thought, a suitable alternative. There were two Members of this House who were asked for their resignations from the Association. Everybody was asked for his resignation; but some were asked to serve again The only person not asked for his resignation was the chief executive officer. If that was an efficiency test, why did they leave Casabianca standing on the burning deck all by himself? But there has been reorganisation, and new members have been appointed. Well, I have looked at the list of new members. I do not know that any of them have ever been to sea before. They apparently have struck stormy weather in the early days of their passage, but I am sure we wish them well. I would counsel them not to let it worry them too much lest somebody come along and ask for their resignations without any explanation.
What I really want to get at is this. What was the purpose of this reorganisation? My attitude towards the Housing Association has never been concealed, but I was worried, in this Parliament, after an initial protest, to give it a run for its money. It is costing a lot of money. A new director has been appointed at a salary of £3,000. In the last Parliament, when we sought the extension of the powers of this Association, I protested that there was nothing the Association could do, that a local authority could not do, and that the Association never created one single additional building trade unit, nor yet did it provide one single item by way of a building trade commodity. I repeat that. I have always wanted to know what purpose was behind this. I

understand that they are to build 100,000 houses in 10 years. That is the point to which I want to come. I do not want to discourage them, but that is 10,000 houses per annum—perhaps. But on nth September an advertisement appeared in the "Glasgow Herald"—and, I presume in the "Scotsman," for the benefit of the intellectual Members who come from the East—for technical officers. On a rough calculation I made out that at least they were being saddled with an overhead of between £50,000 and £60,000 per annum in salaries. I think these people are entitled to a good salary, but what purpose does it serve, in a scarcity market, advertising appointments at salaries far in excess of those paid to the same technicians by local authorities and private employers in Scotland? My right hon. Friend is dropping an inflationary bomb into every city engineer's office in Scotland, because the only way they can retain their staff is by giving them a wages or salaries boost. Clerks of works are advertised for at £12 per week, when only a miserable £5 per week is the average rate paid. This is reflected in the cost of houses, apart from anything else, but I want to know just exactly what this huge technical army proposes to do.
Ten thousand houses per annum—that is an optimistic estimate, and I am not blaming them if they do not build 10,000 houses per annum. I tried to do it myself when bricklayers were three a penny, and could not do it, but that is by the way. Could the Joint Undersecretary, when he is replying, tell me whether it is proposed that this Association should construct the new towns which were planned, one of them located in Lanarkshire and one in Dumbarton? I want to know if it is proposed to use the Association for that purpose. I also want to know, seeing that the subsidy is due for revision, if it is the intention of the Government to give the same financial consideration to local authorities as they give to the Special Housing Association? If it is the policy of the Government to give 100 per cent.from funds provided by the Treasury to the Special Housing Association, then I submit that they cannot deny the same concessions to the local authorities. Here is what has happened A proposal was before the Glasgow corporation a fortnight ago that they should enter into a contract, with an organisation of contractors, which has


been formed to build 12,000 houses. The argument used against the corporation's entering into that covenant was this, and it came from some of the people who were the most vociferous supporters of Glasgow's accepting 2,000 houses from the Housing Association: "Why do you not get the Housing Association to enter into this contract, and then we, the citizens of Glasgow, will not be required to provide an £80,000 sinking fund?"
My right hon. Friend knows that the only attraction for local authorities in taking the assistance of the Special Housing Association is that the houses cost the local authorities nothing. I do not understand the set-up at all. I am informed on pretty fair authority that the Special Housing Association has the Dundee Corporation as contractors, in Dundee, on a site which originally belonged to the corporation. What sort of poppycock is this? Where are we getting to? If the 2,000 houses offered to Glasgow are going to be built by the Association, I presume that the Glasgow corporation will become contractors to the Housing Association for the servicing of the sites. The only virtue about it is that the houses will cost the local authority nothing. I do not like the Housing Association and I have never concealed it. I think there was an ulterior purpose behind its original creation, and whatever useful work they may have been able to do before the war, I have searched my conscience to see whether I could give them credit for doing any useful work after the war.
My hon. Friends will say that the Association has been reorganised. That is what I want to know—I want to know exactly what the reorganisation has been about and what is the purpose behind it. The local authorities have persuaded the Secretary of State for Scotland to fix a revision date for the subsidy in 1947 and that experience has proved the subsidy to be wholly inadequate, as the Government's contribution is fixed and limited and that the local authorities' contribution is a minimum without any maximum. In the light of experience I submit that, if the Government can give 100 per cent.from the Treasury to cover the cost of houses built by the Association, the local authorities are entitled to claim at least the same treatment.

6.36 p.m.

Lieut.-Commander Clark Hutchison: There are many aspects of housing on which one would like to speak this evening, but as I know that a great many hon. Members on both sides want to take part I will confine my observations briefly to three points. I would first say a word on the question of the general progress of the Government's housing programme, because it has already been the subject of argument. It seems to me that the only fair way in which one can judge progress is to compare actual achievements with what the Government estimated, at the beginning of the Session, that they would do. My datum line is a statement made by the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in answer to a Question I put to him on 16th October of last year. He said:
The Government aim at having 20,000 permanent houses built or building by the end of June, 1946, … Their target is to have 20,000 temporary houses completed by the first date…."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th October, 1945; Vol. 414, c. 940.]
I am only dealing at the moment with the period up to 30th June, 1946. I suggest that it is necessary to dispel that aura of complacency and self-congratulation which seems to have centred itself round the Secretary of State by pointing out that the achievement so far, by 30th June, has not been very impressive. Actually we find, by referring to the official returns, that by 30th June, 16,910 permanent houses were then built or building, of which incidentally no less than 4,500 were started before the Coalition Government left office, and that 4,433 temporary houses had been completed. In other words, the achievements, as compared with the Government's own estimate, show a deficiency of over 3,000 permanent houses and no less than 15,500 temporary houses. I cannot see any reason for complacency or self-congratulation on the part of the Secretary of State or anybody else associated with the housing programme.
One would like to know what all the reasons are for the delay. The Secretary of State has given two this afternoon. He said that in the early stages of the programme there was some shortage of labour, but I understand him to say that that is no longer a factor in the situation. He also said that there was a shortage of certain components used in building houses—glass, electrical equipment, drain


pipes and so on, and that is, I understand, the main difficulty at the moment. My only comment on that is that I do not think very much of the Government's planning. They have very great powers for dealing with these matters; towards the end of last year this House passed the Building Materials and Housing Act, 1945, which empowers the Minister of Works to purchase building materials and equipment for building, and authorises him to make and carry out arrangements for the production and distribution of building materials and equipment. Although many of us on this side rather doubted the wisdom and efficiency of that Act we did not oppose it in principle, neither did we oppose the Second or Third Reading, but I think our fears were justified, and it does not appear to have been of much use in ironing out shortages of materials.
I should like to say a word on the subject of finance. It has been referred to by the Secretary of State in his opening remarks today, and I am very glad, because earlier in this Session when we were discussing the Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act, 1946, I put several questions about costs but was not successful in extracting any answer from any Member of the Government, either during the Second Reading Debate or during the Committee stage. It seems to me that this question of cost is exercising, and rightly exercising, the attention of the Government, because I noticed that the Minister stated a few days ago, at a public function in London, that building prices have already gone as high as this country can stand and must go no higher. According to the Secretary of State the present cost of a permanent house of the traditional type, which I assume to be a four-roomed house, is £1,150. I take it that that is inclusive of services. I was told when I was visiting a housing estate in Edinburgh that they put the figure at £1,170. It is worth while noting that a comparable house in 1939 would have cost £530, or about half the price. I was told in Edinburgh that they estimated the cost of a temporary house at about £1,300 exclusive of services, and the Secretary of State also mentioned the figure of £1,300 today. That seems to be a very high price for a dwelling which is assessed as having a life of only 10 years. I hope that we may have more information later on about these matters of cost, because I

understand that next year the question of subsidies falls due for further discussion and legislation.
Another point of considerable interest and importance is the question of the requisitioning powers of the local authorities. I put it to the Secretary of State that neither he nor the Government are backing up the local authorities sufficiently in their activities in this direction. I say that because at the moment there are no less than 94 large houses in Edinburgh having an annual rateable value of £80 or more, most of which are in my own Division, which are being occupied by some Government Department or other. The corporation are most anxious to get hold of some of these buildings for the housing of homeless people—

Mr. Buchanan: Not empty houses?

LJeut.-Commander Hutchison: My point is that they are in possession of Government Departments, and that it is high time that we got these people out of these dwellings. Another point is that they are occupied only during the day, and are empty, except perhaps for the odd caretaker, during the night. I make the suggestion that the same practice should be followed as was followed by the Admiralty during the war. Admiralty staff worked in hutments. This system worked quite well, and it is something which might be looked into. Investigation might show that comparatively few people are working in some of these premises, and the Secretary of State might consider telescoping some of these Departments to make some of these houses free. I therefore ask him to look into this matter to see whether he cannot make available for use for housing purposes some of these dwellings which at present are in the hands of various Government Departments. I would remind the Secretary of State that there is in force a Regulation—Defence Regulation 68CA prohibiting the conversion of dwelling houses, which includes hotels, into business premises. I regret to say that the Secretary of State has set rather a bad example in Edinburgh which has caused a good deal of irritation, because he overruled the Town Council who were anxious to secure an hotel which was being sold for housing purposes. The Secretary of State overruled their decision, and he allowed a firm of contractors to occupy this building for business purposes.

Mr. Buchanan: I think that the hon, and gallant Gentleman should tell the full story. I am interrupting in fairness, because the facts are as follow. We had better say who the firm was. It was Messrs. Wimpey, the contractors who are carrying out extremely valuable building contracts in Scotland. They occupied an office which they used for work in this area, but because of the extensive business which was increasing in Scotland, it was necessary that they should find room for surveyors and other people. What they did was to give up their other place which was not so big, and they got this one for housing purposes. It was a thing which we had to do for housing, because getting people to work in offices for housing purposes is just as important as getting them to work on a site. I trust that the House will accept that explanation.

Lieut.-Commander Hutchison: I am glad to get that explanation, but I would point out to the Secretary of State that there is a psychological approach as well as a practical approach in matters of this kind. While he is perfectly correct that Messrs. Wimpey are giving up their premises, it is going to cost a great deal to convert these premises into dwellings, whereas the Town Council could have had this hotel and with very little difficulty could have effected the necessary conversion. I know that this matter is now finished with, but I hope that tie will pay full regard to cases of this kind in the future.

Mr. Buchanan: I want to make this perfectly clear. I have been challenged repeatedly by Members opposite for not giving private enterprise a chance. Messrs. Wimpey are a private-enterprise firm. They need offices, and so long as they operate I propose to give them a decent office in order that they can carry-out their work of housing construction on a big scale.

Lieut.-Commander Hutchison: I am, of course, glad to get that explanation, but all I can say is that it is very desirable that the Secretary of State shall endeavour to take the local authorities with him in future, because this case has been a source of irritation.

6.47 p.m.

Mr. Hoy: I am rather surprised that the hon. and gallant Member for West

Edinburgh (Lieut-Commander Hutchison) should have taken the line he has taken over the allocation of offices to Messrs. Wimpey. This was not a decision forced upon Edinburgh by the Scottish Office, but a decision arrived at by the Edinburgh corporation. They decided, in the best interests of all concerned, that Messrs. Wimpey should have offices which were sufficient to cope with the contracts they received in Edinburgh and elsewhere. I think that it is making a mountain out of a molehill to use a small incident of this kind to attempt to fasten on the Scottish Office responsibility for not having released houses for temporary accommodation.

Lieut.-Commander Hutchison: I do not know whether the hon. Member understands the facts. The corporation had earmarked this hotel for housing purposes. They put up a proposition to the Secretary of State, but under the Defence Regulations he refused to confirm it.

Mr. Hoy: I agree that that is what happened, but Messrs. Wimpey agreed to release other premises, and I think it was a very satisfactory arrangement which met with approval in Edinburgh. I do not wish to hammer at the point too long, because there are many hon. Members who wish to take part in this discussion.
I was a little surprised at the attack launched on the Government by the right hon and learned Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Mr. J. S. C. Reid). I thought he made very heavy weather when he was discussing the speech of the Secretary of State. My right hon. Friend has not always received my wholehearted support, but I did notice that he was careful to say, "Twenty thousand houses built or building." In our previous Debates he has used the same expression, but what I am much more interested in is getting houses built.
I want to make one or two points of criticism about supplies. I very much regret that the Ministry of Supply are not represented on the Front Bench today, because I understand that one of the greatest complaints from contractors is the lack of electrical supplies. I understand that the Ministry of Supply, at least in certain sections, is the Department responsible. In communication with the Ministry recently, I was making a complaint regarding an electric cable


for a housing scheme. I know the Minister is making attempts to meet the shortage, but when one is faced with having to wait 104 weeks for delivery of a certain type of electrical cable, it does not fill one with great hope of getting all houses that we require in Scotland. There are many types of electrical supplies which are scarce. Housing is waiting on electrical tubes, switches, and mains boxes. I know one firm in Edinburgh which cannot carry on with its schemes for approximately 1,000 houses, because of the lack of electrical supplies. We are entitled to know what steps the respective Departments are taking to produce these supplies. Without them we cannot have finished and occupied houses. I also understand that there is a great scarcity of light castings. We shall expect the Under-Secretary to tell us tonight, what steps are being taken to overcome these scarcities, because we are entitled to have some answers to these questions.
I want to deal with the question of the shortage of other materials. For a long time there were complaints from all over the country about the scarcity not only of painters to complete houses, but of painting material. I do not think the position has eased in the past few months, and I am perturbed about the tremendous amount of these materials which are being used on public houses and buildings of that type when they ought to be-diverted to ordinary housing. I think a great deal of responsibility for this must, again, be laid at the door of the Ministry of Works. In many ways I think they are too free with the licences they issue, while they always seem to be adamant in refusing them in what most of us consider to be necessitous cases. The licensing department of the Ministry of Works must be overhauled. The Joint Under-Secretary ought to look into the way in which local authorities are using their licensing powers. For instance, a few weeks ago in the City of Edinburgh, the local licensing committee gave a man a licence to add a bedroom to his house. I am not arguing for one moment that the man wanted more room than was necessary, but with a wife and three children he had a five-apartment house, with the usual offices. I understand that he wanted one of his "in-laws" to stay with the family, though I can scarcely believe that he was

eager to have his mother-in-law. He was granted a licence for £250, with which to put an extra bedroom on to his house.
There are other abuses of these licensing powers and the Government must be adamant in dealing with cases of this kind. There is no room for wastage of material or labour until we have sufficient houses to meet our immediate needs. When my hon. Friend the Joint Undersecretary is discussing this problem he might also discuss it with the Ministry of Works, because in many cases I think they are too free with their licences. If the suggestions which have been made were adopted I think we should save material and employ our available labour in a better way. I hope the Minister will make an endeavour to meet the criticisms I have had to make.

6.56 p.m.

Major Guy Lloyd: There is no more burning question that we as representatives of Scotland could possibly discuss at the moment than that of housing. I do not think there is any subject about which Scottish people, both in rural areas and in industrial and urban areas, are more deeply concerned at the present time. I wish we were able to accommodate the representatives of the thousands of homeless people in Scotland here today, so that they could listen to this Debate. We have not had many listening today, but there are many hundreds of thousands of people in Scotland who are greatly concerned with what we say and do here on the subject of housing and I fear that they will read their newspapers tomorrow with bitter disappointment about the comparatively fruitless results of our discussions.
I listened to the speech of the Secretary of State and I must confess that I was absolutely shocked, at the complacency with which he made his statement, and the satisfaction which was apparent throughout all he said. What on earth is there to be satisfied about, in the progress of housing in Scotland? Does the right hon. Gentleman imagine that the homeless people there, or the thousands of people who are concerned about them in Scotland, are satisfied? If he is satisfied, then he is the only person in Scotland who is. The right hon. Gentleman should be the major representative of Scottish discontent and disillusionment. He is our leader in Scotland. On him we depend


for drive and energy, and for representation, in the Cabinet, about Scottish grievances—the many Scottish grievances which have been represented here, in connection with the lack of facilities given in Scotland with regard to raw materials and supplies.
I do not blame the Joint Undersecretary who is responsible for housing, half so much as I do the Secretary of State for the situation which prevails in Scotland. We ought to be adequately represented with strength and force in the Cabinet. If our grievances with regard to the lack of supplies and lack of attention by the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Supply and other Departments were adequately represented, and there was no satisfactory result, then the only way to handle the matter would be through resignation by the Minister. If that is the only means of protesting against the inefficiency of Departments in Whitehall, which seem to run the whole of our life these days, then let us have resignations. Resignations were called for from the Special Housing Association, presumably because it was not doing as well as it could do. Does the Front Bench, representing Scotland, imagine that it is doing a good job in this respect? If they are not happy about it and are dissatisfied, and do not want to be blamed themselves—and I do not think that they need be entirely blamed—then surely the courageous thing to do is to say so frankly, if necessary by means of resignation. But no one ever resigns from the Government Front Bench today.
I know the Joint Under-Secretary of State well, and I have a great respect for him, and I cannot believe that, when he comes to reply, he can say that he is satisfied. I cannot believe that he shares the self-satisfaction and complacency of his colleague, the Secretary of State. If he does, he is not being true to his nature. He has courage. Let him say if he is satisfied, and, if he is satisfied, if he shares the complacency shown by the Secretary of State in his speech. If he is not satisfied, and cannot get his own way, and if the Department will not help him more than they are doing, let him have the courage, which he has always shown throughout his long career in Parliament, to resign, and tell Scotland the reason why. That is what the situation is coming to—some drastic action. We can all

criticise and point out faults, but only one speech from the opposite side has shown any criticism of the present position. Everyone else has patted the Government on the back and shared in the satisfaction of the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State said that he had nothing for which to apologise. Good heavens, these two Ministers, representing Scotland in connection with houses, should be here in a white sheet. They have everything for which to apologise. It may not be their fault, but they have a great deal for which to apologise in so far as they represent Scotland on this question.
The housing record is a pitiable story of utter failure and of a ghastly difference between promises and performance. After all the promises which were made in this connection during the General Election in Scotland, from platform after platform, let us look at the miserable results today. The pledges and promises given by representatives of my Party, 220,000 houses in Great Britain to include Scotland, was called "chicken feed." Whatever I said with regard to housing in Scotland, I was told that it was not enough. I was told by the Socialists "What is the good of that?" "Chicken feed" was what the Minister in this House had called it a few days before. What about the "chicken feed" today? The story is shameful and the people of Scotland are getting desperate about it.
I am getting pitiable letters from constituents who are in the most desperate plight for homes—the most terrible stories of people living under the most dreadful conditions, some of them suffering from tuberculosis. There are pitiable stories of people coming home from the war, after long service, who cannot get homes, and have not the faintest chance of getting homes. What are we going to do about it? The Secretary of State today represented a complacent attitude which was absolutely disgraceful. If he had said, "We have failed to implement our promises but we have had all kinds of difficulties to contend with, mainly from Whitehall, and we really are ashamed of our record, and hope you will forgive us and understand," we would have respected and admired his courage. "I have no apology to make," he said, for his pitiable record of failure. It seems that the situation is deplorable in the extreme. The story which has been told us today is not going to hold out one


ray of hope to the thousands of homeless people in every part of Scotland. That applies especially to the urban areas and in the rural areas it is even worse. Not a single thing is being done to assist those who live in the rural areas, and who will be of such vital importance to our agricultural work in the future.
I would say a word or two about the position of squatters. I am particularly interested, because a number of squatters have come from Glasgow into Renfrewshire and taken possession of hutments there. What is to happen with regard to the apportionment of responsibility? Have the Renfrewshire county council to accept as their new tenants squatters from Glasgow, for whom they have no responsibility? Is the expense of maintaining these camps and looking after all the sanitation, which is quite substantial, to fall on the Renfrewshire county council or upon the Glasgow corporation? It seems that we must have a very definite understanding about matters of that kind. Why should people come from one area into another area and become a considerable charge on that area, without a "By your leave" and without any specific ruling or action from the Government on the matter?
With regard to the Ministry of Works, I have the greatest sympathy for the Under-Secretary. I wish that he would tell the House, and Scottish Members, today, the truth about his difficulties. I beg him to have the courage to do so. Then everyone would respect him. Whitehall is just running us today, and not giving us sufficient freedom with regard to housing. Muddle and mess are going on, and the officialdom in the Ministry of Works is too bad They have their representatives in Scotland, but what power have those representatives? For anything worth while they have to refer for consent to their higher-ups in Whitehall. Let the Minister of Works delegate to them real powers, and let them be men of courage who will not constantly refer every little thing to Whitehall for ruling and consent.
There has been talk about houses for key workers. I attended a conference in Scotland, at which there were colleagues from both sides of the House, on the subject of what the Board of Trade hope to do in bringing new works to Scotland. We all discovered that one of the major

difficulties in the way of these plans, most of which were on paper, was that if these works came to Scotland there were no houses for the key workers. What has the Under-Secretary to say with regard to that? It is a very vital point. Local authorities have enormous waiting lists. Are they to give up the waiting lists of their own local people to strangers from England, for the sake of key workers? There ought to be a special method of building houses for key workers, without asking the local authorities to sacrifice their own houses and to tamper with their pathetic waiting-lists. I do not think that it is fair to ask the local authorities to allocate precious houses to key workers coming from England. We ought to have a better policy than that. The Government might even use the Special Housing Association for that purpose. I am not concerned in going through the figures which we have all studied. How anyone can suggest that these figures are not pathetic, and how anyone can hold out any hope to homeless people in Scotland for many years to come, I simply cannot understand.

7.9 p.m.

Mrs. Jean Mann: I feel greatly honoured to have such a huge attendance of Members on the opposite benches. There must be at least a dozen. I want to point out that the dozen represents 300 per cent. increase in the number of Members opposite who attended the last attack on the Government in regard to housing. I believe that there was throughout that Debate an average attendance of four. Nevertheless, that four represented three more than those who attended the conference when we were discussing work in Scotland last week. When Members of Parliament were invited to two of the industrial estates to find out what was really being done for Scotland, I believe that we had one Member present from the Opposition benches. If the Government's record in housing is in any way synonymous with this alleged interest of hon. Members opposite in either housing or work, then Scotland is in a bad way indeed. I have listened to the criticisms that have come from the Benches opposite. Criticisms are always good for any Government; even newspaper criticisms are very good. I hope the time will never come when criticism will be stifled either in the Press or from the


public. But criticisms in a Debate of this kind ought surely to be constructive. I have searched for a single constructive suggestion in the speeches of hon. Members opposite; I nave read the Scottish newspapers on housing; I have even attended some of my opponents' meetings, and still I have not got from them a single constructive suggestion.
We who have been interested in housing and have followed it between the two wars know how dreadful the position is. We know that there are thousands who are homeless, who have not a roof over their heads, and we know why. We know that since the withdrawal of the Wheatley Act in 1933, there has not been an Act on the Statute Book under which a local authority in Scotland could build for other than the overcrowded and slum clearance. In other words, from 1933 every local authority in Scotland was prohibited from building unless it was for those already in houses, namely, slum clearance and overcrowding. Will hon. Members opposite tell their constituents that? It is not due to the war. It is due to ineptitude and lack of foresight on the part of the Government six years before the war. Is it not a fact that all the local authorities in Scotland sent up protest after protest pleading to be allowed to build houses for the newly married, and their protests were all turned down? The hon. and gallant Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith) was a member of my housing committee when I was convener. He was present when, in that committee, we asked our architect to design cottage homes on the Pollok Estate. He was also present, I believe, when the refusal came back from the Department of Health to allow us to build anything but houses for slum clearance and overcrowding. I believe he joined in the protest which was made to Sir Godfrey Collins in an effort to get him to reconsider that decision. There are many thousands of people who are homeless—not homeless for a year, not homeless even since the war, but people who, as we know from the heartbreaking applications that come to us, now have three or four children and have been 10 years waiting for a house; and if they have been 10 years waiting for a house, hon. Members opposite cannot shirk the blame. I am reminded of the Knights of the Round Table, of one of whom it was said:

His honour rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.
If today hon. Members opposite had any constructive suggestion to make, we would gladly listen to it. Have they learned anything from those 10 years before the war, or the six years of the war? What did we hear from the Front Opposition Bench today? There was a single suggestion that we ought to publish the Housing Report twice monthly instead of monthly. Would that give us houses any quicker? No. It would simply enable the Opposition to criticise a little more often. Surely, their purpose and interest were revealed in a statement of that sort. Is housing to be the plaything of politicians for criticising each other, or is it something that we genuinely desire? I say—and I fear no honest contradiction—that there is more being done for Scotland in housing today than ever before in the annals of Scottish history. Hon. Members opposite know that I have never been backward in criticising, and I have often criticised my own Labour group in Glasgow Town Council, and would very readily do so today; I have also criticised the Government Front Bench; but I have seen, since the advent of Labour, all that I wanted, all the criticism that I made, put into action. I tried to be constructive in my criticism.
First, I thought that the traditional methods of housebuilding would never give us the number of houses required, and secondly, I thought that the traditional method of accepting tenders would never give us the number of houses required. What do hon. Members opposite say? They say that we are not using something or other—probably they mean private enterprise. Here is a list of the additions to the traditional methods, and they have all been introduced recently: The aluminium house, the Swedish timber house, the "Quality," the "Paragon," the "Tarran," the "Orlit," the "Cruden," the "No-Fines" Wimpey. Hon. Members opposite say that we are not encouraging private enterprise. Who are Wimpey's? Are not these firms private enterprise? There is the "Uni-Seco," the "Duplex," the British Iron and Steel Federation, the "Airey," the "Cussens," the "Easi-form," the foam slag, the "Scotswood," the "Steane," the "Unity" and the "Wates." Every different method is a departure from the


old that could pass a reasonable test and is actually in operation.
During the inter-war years we lagged behind with our deplorable system of having a fight between direct labour and the building contractor. The hon. and gallant Member for Pollok agreed with me that we should use both, and more if we could get them, but at that time, and for 20 years, we could only see an inflexibility on the part of the Government that would not budge from this position—that we had to accept the lowest tender. That went on for year after year, although in accepting the lowest tenders we were probably rejecting 11 or 12 potentially good building firms.
That has all changed. Not only is there multiple contracting instead of merely the single contractor, but also these potential builders who were formerly rejected are now grouped together. In addition there is the Scottish Special Housing Association. Yet we have been attacked with the suggestion that we are neglecting the rural workers, and it has been said that we have withdrawn the Rural Workers Housing Act. I do not know if it is a Rural Workers Housing Act; it never gave us a single additional house. It was in fact a reconditioning Act under which the reconditioning was paid for in the proportion of one-third by the local ratepayer, one-third by the taxpayer, and the remaining third by the landlord. I think it would be better called "the Rural Landlord's Housing Act," because the house remained his. He had it reconditioned and modernised and had only to pay one-third of the bill; the rest of us paid the other two-thirds Moreover when landlords had their houses reconditioned on such advantageous terms there was not much incentive to press for new houses, and it is new houses that are going up in the rural areas now. What a dismal tale has been told; yet wherever one goes these houses are going up.

Lord William Scott: Where?

Mrs. Mann: Everywhere. I was in the rural areas at the weekend and even in a little place like Dunblaine I saw them completed and going up, and in my own little rural town or burgh of Airdrie there are 842 wall high. That will mean that very soon there will be nearly 4,000 of my constituents in that burgh under new

housing—and let hon. Members mark that there are only 15,000 persons in that burgh who are not already housed under municipal roofs. It therefore means that about 28 per cent. of them are being provided for by houses which are already wall high. Yes, hon. Gentlemen opposite are like the spirit of Ovid; they hover over Greece, over the stately temples and harbours, and they weep because there is nothing to weep about. They should get in all that they can just now because very soon they will have nothing whatever to talk about.

7.24 p.m.

Mr. John Henderson: I should like to take the opportunity of pointing out to the hon. Lady the Member for Coatbridge (Mrs. Mann) that when she began her interesting speech there were exactly the same number of hon. Members present on this side of the House as on hers—namely, 13. By the time she resumed her seat her support had risen to 17. I think it is only right to make that point clear, and when one considers the representation of Scottish Members in this House it does not reflect very great credit on the Scottish and Socialist Members so far as their attendance at this present moment is concerned. I should like to say one or two things arising out of this Debate because I have sat right through the discussion since the early part of the afternoon and have heard the various figures thrown across the House from one side or the other—the various numbers of houses and the different types of houses—and the conflicting opinions as to how housing is progressing.
There is a shortage in Scotland of 600,000 houses and I venture to suggest that even supposing it were possible to erect 600,000 houses overnight there would still remain a problem of the greatest concern and urgency because throughout Scotland there would still be hundreds of thousands of people who were not in new houses but who had been tenants in one and two roomed kitchen houses without proper sanitary facilities. In Glasgow alone there is a shortage of 96,000 houses and if every one of these houses were supplied and occupied in the next 10 to 30 years—and I think 30 years is more likely to be the time it will take to erect them—it would still leave more than half of the population in houses where they have to share a common


water closet, and where there are no hot or cold water facilities and absolutely no bathrooms. Therefore, however the Government may seek to find cause for satisfaction in the progress they have made and will be making in the immediate future, the problem is one of the greatest urgency. There seem to be two schools of thought as to how this problem should be tackled. The Government appear to be of the opinion that the policy should be to get on with completely new houses and that all existing houses should be ignored and all possible efforts of building concentrated on new houses. I do suggest that the great tenements and other large villas in the West of Scotland, the structure of which is externally sound, could, if it were possible to divert the labour, be reconstructed and solve a very huge problem, giving increased accommodation for the overcrowded people of the city of Glasgow. I hope that if the Secretary of State can find it within his province he will deal with this question of the reconstruction and alteration of some of these houses which are capable of being altered to accommodate additional people.
An hon. Gentleman on this side of the House expressed concern with regard to the method of allocating these houses. I should like to say that in the city of Glasgow that subject has been causing a considerable amount of concern for a long time. As the hon. Lady the Member for Coatbridge well knows, since she was a convener of housing in the corporation of Glasgow, out of a total of 130 members of the Glasgow Corporation 36 have helped themselves to council houses.

Mrs. Mann: I do not think the hon. Gentleman means to give the impression that whilst I was convener these people helped themselves to houses. I think he knows that I was very much opposed to council members obtaining these houses.

Mr. Henderson: I did not for one moment try to imply that, but I did want the hon. Lady to confirm the fact that my statement was perfectly true. In one of the schemes known as the Moss Park Estate, every profession is represented— doctors, lawyers, chartered accountants and high officials of the corporations, men who are earning very substantial salaries, and I think it is a disgrace that the working man with four or five pounds a week in Glasgow should have 6d. of his rates

charged against housing under these various housing schemes. It is a fact that today-even Members of Parliament with £1,000 a year are in subsidised corporation houses in Glasgow. I think that the Secretary of State for Scotland might pay a little attention to this aspect and ensure that these houses are occupied by the people for whom they were originally intended.

7.30 p.m.

Mr. J. L. Williams: So many aspects of the housing problems of Scotland have been covered by hon. Members that my remarks will be very brief. I represent a Glasgow constituency which is very badly housed in parts. I do not want to describe how bad its housing conditions are, as I think we have passed that stage. I would say only that they must be as bad as the worst conditions ever described in this House in housing Debates from time to time. My attention is called to plenty of pitiable cases week by week. We hear quite a lot about slums and overcrowding, and about rats, bugs, mice, and other creatures. The fact remains that the people who live in those conditions do not attempt to blame any particular Government. They do not believe they are due to the misdeeds of any one Government, and much less to a Government which is in its first Session.
Those people know full well the truth of this matter, which is that the problem goes back for at least 150 years. It is part of the industrial system under which we live. It goes back to the days when the workers came from the fields to the factories and left the villages for the new iron towns and textile towns. Those people found themselves huddled together with a very low standard of housing, both as respects building and accommodation, and there was a very low conception of the living space needed for human beings. Ideas have changed to a great extent upon that matter. They have changed most rapidly, like ideas in other directions, under the stress of war, and at a time when no houses, or very few houses, could be built. The problem with which we are faced today is a legacy from the early days of the Industrial Revolution.
I am rather tempted by some remarks made about Glasgow and election promises to say a few words about the recent Election. The last General Election was fought in some constituencies in Glasgow upon the housing record of the Glasgow


city council, by the choice of the Conservative Party. It was thought that that would be a good thing. The result is well known to all hon. Members. It made very little impression. So far as the city council itself is concerned, the Opposition again thought last November that they were on a good thing, after 12 years of what was considered a bad housing record on the part of the council. The fact today is that the Labour Party's majority on the council is higher than it has ever been before. But my constituents are not satisfied, I am not satisfied, none of us is satisfied. I wish to speak about some of the things which concern the people in my division. They feel that housing progress is being retarded by certain factors, the first of which is the diversion of building materials to purposes other than those connected with housing. Then people find materials are being used extensively in connection with the repair of big houses away in the suburbs somewhere. They begin to wonder whether those materials are illicitly obtained.
In the second place, people are very much concerned about what they consider to be the low proportion of building workers engaged in house building. Figures have been given in this House from time to time, ranging from 50 per cent. to 60 per cent. of the total number of workers in the building industry. The figure appears fairly high, but many of these workers live themselves in decayed or overcrowded houses and feel they do very little towards building houses for families who need them, because their energies are engaged in other branches of the building industry.
The third point is that there are still in the Forces men with long experience of this industry. There are joiners, bricklayers, painters, plasterers, and even architects, who cannot obtain release. Hon. Members, including myself, receive many letters from such men. What is more disappointing is that those men are engaged, according to what they tell us, in menial duties and in work which is not essential, or which could at least be done by people of less experience in the Army, and the other Services.
My last point is in relation to the letting of houses. I can confirm from my own experience week by week every word that has been said by the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Mathers) concerning

the feeling in the minds of the people that they are not getting a fair deal. This function is entrusted to local authorities, who vary in their methods. As a background to the methods adopted there is a great deal of valuable administrative experience. I have no doubt about that. There is also the fact that houses are being let in a pretty fair manner, on the whole. Nevertheless, there is dissatisfaction. It is natural that competition should be keen and that people should feel intensely on this matter so long as there are so few houses, in comparison with the large number of applicants. It is not sufficient that we should be doing the right thing in this connection, especially with so many new houses coming along. We should convince the people themselves that we are doing the right thing. I ask the Joint Under-Secretary of State to give us a word of reassurance upon these matters.

7.38 p.m.

Lord William Scott: I would first refer to the last part of the speech of the Secretary of State. The right hon. Gentleman seems very complacent about the housing situation in Scotland, and proud of his own contribution towards a solution. He ended his speech by making a special appeal to local authorities, to whom has been entrusted the principal share of house production in Scotland, and to all other sections of the community who might in any way assist. I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that if his appeal had been made to that section of St. Andrew's House which deals with housing, it would have been far more to the point In my own constituency I have eight local authorities, and I have every reason to suppose that other local authorities throughout Scotland resemble them more or less in most ways, and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that there is no section of the community in the whole of Scotland more anxious to produce finished houses at the earliest possible moment than the local authorities to whom the Government have entrusted the power. If I had been a member or convener of the housing committee of one of these local authorities, in view of the work I have put through and the frustration I have received during the past 18 months, I should have felt it as nothing but an added insult at this late stage to have a


special appeal made to me by the Secretary of State—at the very moment, too, when the local authorities and those who lack houses consider that the chief impediments from which they have suffered all these months are to be found far nearer St. Andrew's House than in the local burghs and the county councils. When I listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman I could not help wondering whether he had himself received this curious spirit of satisfaction from St. Andrew's House or whether those at St. Andrew's House had received their apparent spirit of lack of emergency and lack of necessity from his outlook. Whichever it is, the result has been most distressing to Scotland.
I would like to deal very briefly with two remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Mathers). He made much the same remark this afternoon that we have heard rather more often recently than we did a year ago. He was comparing the failure to produce houses in the post-war months after this war with a failure in the post-war months of the previous war. This House is probably aware that there are three very grim periods in the history of house building in Scotland. Those three periods are the years 1911–12, 1919–20 and 1945–46. I have to thank the right hon. Gentleman for a very valuable White Paper on Scottish housing which he produced some months ago. Information from that discloses that up till the year 1910 housing in Scotland, without any form of subsidy, was running to an average of about 15,000 new houses every year, which was then about adequate for the needs of the people of Scotland. In 1910 there was produced what was known as the People's Budget, which included the tax on unearned increment, which was introduced by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Lloyd George, who in a few years' time was to become Prime Minister. As the result of that Budget, house building in Scotland dropped from about 15,000 new houses a year to under 3,000 new houses in 1911, and in the following year it was under 4,000. There is no man living and no man dead who has struck such a bitter blow at Scottish housing as was done with this unearned increment tax in the Budget of 1910.
We come now to the second bad period, 1919–1920. Listening casually to the words of the hon. Member for Linlithgow

one might have thought it was a wicked Tory Government in power at that period. No one with the broadest stretch of the imagination could ever accuse the then Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, of being a Tory, and it is just as well to remember that in that second Coalition. Government which was in power in 1919– 1920 under the premiership of Mr. David Lloyd George there was possibly the most inefficient Minister that has ever been in charge of housing. We will mention no names. Some of us think it a little unfair that this grim period of housing shortage in 1945–46 is compared with the period 1919–20, with the suggestion that we on these benches or our predecessors were in any way responsible for that period. However, enough of the past.
During the last winter, on many occasions when meeting my constituents, I informed them that I did not believe that any Government that had been in power or had been returned at the General Election in July, 1945, could have made any substantial progress in housing before that winter. I said that the real test would be the number of houses completed in Scotland before the next winter and that my own opinion was that a great number of houses had been promised and that very few would be produced. One of my sorrows at the present moment is the knowledge that in the two counties I represent, although I have a reasonable certainty that quite a number of new houses will be completed somewhere round about May or June next summer, I am reasonably certain that very few additional new houses will be actually finished and ready where they are desperately needed for the coming winter.
One of the most surprising matters, when one looks at this little White Paper, "Housing in Scotland," which we have just been given, is the very great number of new houses that have been started and the very small number that have actually been finished. I have gone into that question with my own local authorities because they showed exactly similar results. I am not quite so worried as to how many are started, but I am very much worried as to how many are finished. The chief reason with the local authorities seems to be that they get on as far as they can with their individual houses and then run short of materials. They then put off work on those particular houses until the necessary materials


come along. Having the labour handy, they get busy in the meantime with another house or another group of houses. So we see these various stages or layers of houses in course of production, and in nearly each case the reason why work has been laid off in any one particular sector is shortage of materials. In the area in which I live we recognise that there has been a quite considerable shortage of both labour and materials. That, I think in many cases, was inevitable, and I do not hold anyone specially to blame for that. What was quite unnecessary and very distressing was the fact that what labour and material were available were not by any means in all cases put to the best use. There is no question at all that at the time when various housing projects in different parts of Scotland were held up because of a shortage of material of one kind or another, a very few miles away there was a definite store of that self-same material which was not being used but was being carefully guarded by the local authority who would be using it in a few months' or a few weeks' time. I am convinced that if there had been a happier distribution of the available labour and material, we would today have far more houses finished in Scotland.

Mr. Westwood: May I ask the noble Lord if it was the local authority who did that?

Lord William Scott: I do not want to attribute the blame. I think each one of my local authorities, looking back now, has probably made one or two mistakes. They have been desperately keen to produce houses, and they have each in turn been held up owing to shortages of material. From a little gentle snooping of my own, however, I am quite aware that these same local authorities took steps to guard against the danger of a similar shortage, perhaps of some other material, in the immediate future and, like the Army quartermaster, had cased off what was necessary so that there should be no danger of being faced with these shortages when the time came.

Mr. Westwood: Does not that prove that I was not seeking to insult the local authorities when I made a special appeal to them to give me all the assistance they could to deal with this particular problem?

Lord William Scott: I am afraid the right hon. Gentleman has taken it quite the wrong way. My own local authorities, and I believe those throughout Scotland, are every bit as anxious to help. Even if they had not been 18 months ago, the pressure put upon them from every direction and the amount of distress they see at their own doors have been quite sufficient to induce anybody who has been called upon by his neighbours to serve on a local authority to do all that is conceivably possible to produce the necessary houses.
The other matter which has been drawn very forcibly to our attention by this small booklet in my hand is the apparently inordinate time it takes to build and to finish a permanent house. One understood that in the prewar days—certainly across the Border in England, where the chief building was done by private enterprise—those who were most efficient and produced the greatest number of houses expected to be able, according to the time of the year, to build a house in somewhere between seven and nine months. Yet one is very much surprised to discover that of those houses already partially completed when the Government came into office in 1945, there are still considerable numbers of them apparently not yet completed. The present Government have been in office for over a year, and it looks as if it is now taking very much longer to build and complete a permanent house in Scotland than it did before the war. If that is so, I believe it is due not so much to the slower output of the individual builder as to the fact that we are not making the best possible use of the available building labour. In conclusion, I would say to the right hon. Gentleman today that we look back on the very considerable number of houses that we had been promised, and we are bitterly disappointed at the accomplishment.

7.57 p.m.

Mr. J. J. Robertson: I am very grateful to relieve the strain upon my patience, because I have been sitting here for 6½ hours without leaving the Chamber in the hope that ultimately I might be able to make a small contribution to this housing problem so far as it affects the people who live in rural areas. First, I would like to congratulate the Secretary of State for Scotland on the vigorous manner in which


the housing problem over Scotland generally has been tackled since this Government came into power. Also I would like to say that on this side of the House we sympathise with him in the tragic legacy with which he has been confronted as a result of the neglect of former governments supported by hon. Members opposite. However, I do not desire to concentrate the discussion upon hon. Members opposite who have been endeavouring to make some much needed political capital from this housing question, except to say that certain figures cannot be refuted, and that for every one house built under the administration of a Conservative Government during the first 16 months after the last war, 36 have been built under the administration of this Government.

Lord William Scott: Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that there was a Conservative Government in office during the first 16 months after the last war?

Mr. Robertson: I said that I did not desire to enter into a controversy which I think has been rather overworked by hon. Members opposite, but I do say that it was a predominantly Conservative Government in those days. Now let me turn to the other question, which is more important—

Lord William Scott: rose—

Mr. Robertson: I have only a few moments and I am sorry I cannot give way. While congratulating the right hon. Gentleman, we are by no means satisfied on this side of the House with the housing situation in Scotland. We shall never be satisfied with it until we have achieved the purpose for which this Government was elected, that is, to satisfy the housing needs of the people of Scotland. That has never been done by previous Governments, and we are now setting our hands to that task which I believe will be accomplished in due course. Whilst there is appreciable evidence of progress in the urban districts in Scotland, I am sorry to say that in certain rural areas of Scotland there is a remarkable and tragic neglect of this tremendous problem.
There are probably two main reasons for this. Certain amenities have to be provided in these areas before one can get on with houses there. One of the most vital and important is an ample supply of water. I have the honour to represent

two counties in Scotland, East Lothian and Berwickshire. In East Lothian there is an admirable and adequate supply of water, and progress with housing is going remarkably well. But statistics for Berwickshire show that no houses have been built. When I point out that in the county of Berwick there are no fewer than 14 villages without the semblance of any sanitation, water supply or sewerage system, the House will understand how we sympathise with the Secretary of State for Scotland in facing this huge problem. It is tied up with the tragic legacy of neglect of former administrations in the provision of water supply. I ask the Scottish Secretary to urge on local authorities in rural areas who are not getting on with housing in accordance with the desires of the Government, to come along with their plans for water supplies and sanitation in order that they might get on with housing. If we get the question of water supplies settled we will be able to get on with housing programmes in those areas.
It must be evident to anyone who goes around the country today that in certain areas local authorities are cooperating more eagerly with the Government in their policy than in other parts of the country. In many backward areas it is quite evident that politically reactionary local authorities are not cooperating as they ought. That will probably be remedied by the electorate, in due course, but it is in the meantime an impediment to the building of houses. I am not satisfied that the Scottish Special Housing Association has proved itself as efficient an instrument for the production of houses as it should be. It may be that there has not been sufficient time to test the instrument, but I ask the Secretary of State to bear in mind the necessity of using it in the more backward areas in the rural districts, particularly in politically reactionary areas where local authorities appear not to be overanxious to cooperate with the Government.
I beg my right hon. Friend not to accept for use in Scotland types of permanent prefabricated houses which might be more suitable for the more temperate climate South of the Border. I have no evidence that he is likely to accept those types, but I do not wish to see them foisted on Scotland as they are unsuitable for Scottish needs. Hon.


Members on these benches regard the housing problem as a most serious matter. We do not regard it as a matter on which to make political capital, but desire to make a real job of the provision of houses for the people of Scotland. I am confident that our task will be accomplished with every credit to this Government.

8.7 p.m.

Miss Herbison: Time after time hon. Members on the other side have suggested that the Secretary of State for Scotland and hon. Members on this side are complacent about the housing situation in Scotland. There is nothing further from the truth. When the Secretary of State was making his opening statement he said quite clearly that things were not just as he would have liked them, and that progress had not been so great as he would have wished. No one could accuse a single hon. Member on this side of the House of being complacent. When we go round our constituencies and see the shocking conditions under which our people are asked to live it makes us the very opposite of complacent. Those conditions are definitely not due to wartime, nor to one year of Labour rule. People in my constituency of North Lanark are living in houses which ought to have been condemned long before the war, but they could not be condemned because the Conservative Government of those days had made no provision whatever to house the people of that constituency. The hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) accused us of laughing. We were not treating the matter lightly—the laughter was due to the ludicrous statements made by the hon. Member.
The right hon. and learned Member for Hillhead (Mr. J. S. C. Reid) said that so far we had produced only 2,617 permanent houses. The emphasis was not on the number, but on the word "only." It has been pointed out in this Debate that the number may not be very big— and none of us are at all satisfied, with either the number of permanent or of temporary houses—but surely one hon. Member of the Opposition would grant that 2,617 permanent houses, plus all the temporary houses we have built in this one year after the war, faced with all the difficulties, is a very good number indeed when compared with the number

built between 1918 and 1919. I see that apparently one hon. Member opposite does not like that comparison, but statements have been made that will go into the Scottish Press tomorrow, and it is most important that we on this side, although we must look to the future, and to providing a greater number of houses, should emphasise to our people in Scotland that those who are in charge of housing in this first year after the war have made a very much better job of it than those who were in charge previously.
The hon. Member for Cathcart (Mr. John Henderson) gave us a very dreary picture of these tenement houses in Glasgow. We know only too well that those conditions exist, but I want, in this short speech, to put the blame where it should go, not on the Members on this side of the House. We were also faced, at the beginning of our term of office, with the fact that no provision whatever had been made for the building of houses when the war ended, nothing but airy phrases that came sometimes in the speeches of the right hon. Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill), when he told the men who were to return as ex-Servicemen of the wonderful cottage homes that were to be ready for them. Not one provision was made for those lovely cottage homes.
There are two points of which I would like the Joint Under-Secretary to take particular notice. One of them I raised at Question time with him previously, and I have discussed it with him also. I wish tonight to emphasise the feeling that there is, not only in my constituency but in many other parts of Scotland, about the letting of the temporary houses. According to the present regulation these temporary houses can be let only to a man, wife and one child, or a man, wife and two children. In some places in my constituency and elsewhere there is no prospect of permanent houses for some time. Indeed, in one corner of my constituency, because of the mineral situation, we have to be content for some time with 200 temporary houses. There are people there living in rooms, a man and wife, sometimes with five chidren—in North Lanark. Are they to sit back, living in a room or a hovel in which no human being ought to have to live, and see a young man, his wife and a child moving into a temporary house?
Surely it would be much better to choose, in each district, the worst cases, and give them the houses that are ready first, irrespective of the size of those families. A temporary house would, to a man and woman living with a family in a room or in a hovel where there are rats, and where water is running in everywhere, be heaven compared with the conditions under which they are living. I make a strong plea to the Joint Under-Secretary to give the greatest consideration to this matter and lighten the hearts of some of these people who have been looking forward to us to get a square deal.
My last point is about labour. I have visited most of the housing schemes in North Lanark and I found one where four bricklayers were needed but where there was one, and he was a trainee bricklayer. It was quite impossible to get those sites serviced as they ought to be serviced. From another corner of my constituency I have received a letter from a parent whose son is an apprentice bricklayer. He has been doing a good job of work and has been called up to the Forces.

Mr. Buchanan: If he is in his union, as I suppose he is, he has only to notify them. The instruction is quite definite. There is to be no call-up of that class of labour. We cannot always cope with every isolated example that occurs, but even if he is not in the union and speaks to my hon. Friend, we will take the necessary steps. I can assure her that there is no call-up of that class of labour at the moment.

Miss Herbison: Even in my maiden speech I made a suggestion that every builder should be brought out of the Forces and that no apprentice, whether he be a builder or anything else concerned in the provision of houses, ought to be called to the Forces. It seems to me that the provision of houses is the most important thing facing this Government today.
I want to end on this note. I have no fear, in spite of all that has been said from the Opposition. Not one constructive suggestion has been offered from the Opposition Members today. We have had tirade after tirade about what this Government has not done, but not one thing have they suggested that we might have been doing which has not been done. We get a similar kind of thing from the papers that support the party opposite.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Hillhead seemed to make very heavy weather about the 20,000 houses and suggested that the Secretary of State or his Department ought to have denied it. If we on this side of the House had to deny every half truth or misstatement that was published in the Opposition Press, we would need to set up another Ministry in the Government. We would need ever so many more civil servants, and then we would have more huge headlines about bureaucracy being set up by the Government. Although we are not complacent and although we think things must move faster in the future, I am satisfied that by the end of our five years the people will have realised the work we have done. They will realise it in Scotland particularly because our figures show that we have provided more houses in respect of the population than have been provided in England in spite of the statement made by the hon. and gallant Member for East Renfrew (Major Lloyd) about control at Whitehall and how badly Scotland was being treated. Scotland will be able to look to this Labour Government at the end of five years and to say they have done a very much better job than has ever been attempted by any previous Government in this country.

8.17 p.m.

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: I would like, if I may, to preface what I am about to say with a postscript—not a very usual procedure. The postscript is to something said by the hon. Member for Berwick and Haddington (Mr. Robertson) when he supported his colleague the hon. Member for Dumbartonshire (Mr. McKinlay) in criticising the Scottish Special Housing Association. I notice that this Association, during the last month for which we have figures available, completed nine houses. It has under construction 2,813 houses and, if my arithmetic is correct, that means that if they go on at the August rate—and August generally is a good building month—they will complete the houses they have already started in 26 years. I am sorry that the noble Lord the Member for Roxburgh and Selkirk (Lord William Scott) did not take his researches into the past a little bit further to give the answer to the hon. Member for Coatbridge (Mrs. Mann) who complained that between the wars the only rehousing that was done


with Government assistance to local authorities was to clear the slums and to alleviate overcrowding. I am sure the hon. Lady did not intend to mislead the House.
She will remember, of course, that we emerged from the 1914–18 war with a known requirement of 236,000 people requiring houses and with an unknown number of people who were living in Scotland in overcrowded conditions. She will remember that the attack on the problem was three-pronged. First of all, there was the attack on clearing the slums. We had the 1930 Act. When the worst of the slums had been cleared the attack was switched to the alleviation of overcrowding, for which purpose we had the 1935 Act to encourage provision of accommodation in order to alleviate that problem. The third prong, the one which the hon. Lady overlooked, was that of rural housing, and, by the Housing (Agricultural Population) (Scotland) Act, 1938, subsidies were given to local authorities for building houses to meet the urgent needs of the agricultural population.

Mrs. Mann: I would like the hon. Member to tell us the Act under which we were allowed to build for newly-married couples—the last Act under which we could build in Scotland.

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: The hon. Lady has had her turn and I have been sitting in this Chamber for six hours awaiting mine. I would only remind her of this. Although we are not complacent about it, by means of these three Acts in the inter-war years, no fewer than 313,000 houses were added to our total Scottish houses, which was over one-third of the number of houses we have in Scotland. Let me clear up another point right away, and that concerns the problem of the squatters, to which the hon. and gallant Member for East Renfrew (Major Lloyd) and other hon. Members have referred.
The Secretary of State said that, when this problem first arose in Scotland, the first step he took was to safeguard the public health and that, without exception, he went on to say, local authorities made the necessary arrangements. That, of course, was in line with the speech made by the Joint Under-Secretary, who was reported in more than one newspaper as saying that, irrespective of the rights or wrongs of the question, people must

in the meantime be provided with the necessary water, sanitation and lighting in the interests of public health. I do not want to make a great point of this, as the case was brought to my notice only yesterday, but, in my own constituency, for the first five weeks of the occupation of Air Ministry huts, water and light were available, but both have now been cut off. I will send the particulars to the hon. Gentleman if he would like to look into the case.

Mr. Buchanan: Mr. Buchanan indicated assent.

Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: What I want to do today is to depart from the immediate problem, which has been stressed over and over again by speaker after speaker, and look ahead a little and try to urge that something should be done—not immediately, because it cannot be done with the immediately urgent problem staring us in the face—to safeguard our traditional way of building in Scotland— our way of building in stone. Stone houses are durable, and all hon. Members of this House from Scottish constituencies will know that they are best fitted to stand the vagaries of our Scottish climate, that they are warm in winter and cool in summer, that they are inexpensive to maintain and that they blend well with our village architecture and harmonise the works of man with the beauties of our Scottish scene. There are, of course, disadvantages of building in stone. It takes a long time. It takes a man longer to build an 18-inch stone rubble wall than it does to build an 11-inch brick wall, and, unfortunately, there are internal walls which have to be lathed and plaster-boarded, which means that they consume timber, and they are more expensive.
I believe, from figures which I have found to be accurate, that they are not as expensive as they are sometimes made out to be. I have some comparisons of costs here showing the difference between stone and brick houses, first of all, in the prewar days at the time when the quarries were in full production, and, secondly, at the present time. In 1935, a four-roomed house containing 800 sq. ft. cost £360 in brick, and £370 in stone. In 1946, a house of the same number of rooms, but containing 933 sq. ft. cost £1,100 in brick and £1,240 in stone. But there are ways of lowering that cost. It is possible to standardise the sizes of window openings and doors and to go in for simplified methods


of construction of which, I have no doubt, the simplest and the best is probably the random rubble of Auld Reekie so beloved of Lorimer, the greatest of our Scottish architects.
I was well received by the Joint Undersecretary just before the Summer Recess when, with certain friends of mine, I went to him to urge that he should make a full inquiry into the economics and the desirability of encouraging building in stone as a long-term policy. I do not for a moment suggest that this will solve our immediate problem, but I do, in the future, want to see the quarries opened up and this useful local industry made possible. I hope that when the Joint Under-Secretary replies he will be able to tell us that a committee or some inquiry has been instituted which will—

Mr. Westwood: May I say that we are actively pursuing that matter and that before the Debate ends the Joint Undersecretary will, no doubt, explain to the House exactly the lines we are taking.

Mr. Thomton-Kemsley: I am very glad to hear that. Of course, exactly the same thing is true of slates, and I hope that the same sort of inquiries will be made with respect to them. One hundred years ago practically all the slates used in Aberdeenshire were quarried in the hills which lie between Huntly and Aberdeen. That local industry was gradually superseded by slates from the Welsh quarries until, today, it is quite impossible to get Aberdeenshire slates although the quarries are still there. I was rather perturbed by a letter which I read in the "Scotsman" during the month of August. I admit that I have been unable to check the facts contained in it although it refers to a place on the borders of my own constituency. The writer of the letter spoke about the action of the Crown Commissioners, of whom the Secretary of State is one, at Tomintoul, where farm buildings were going into disrepair and where, in order to put roofs on them, the Crown Commissioners, in whom the ownership was vested, ignored the local slate quarries, which produce an admirable slate and, instead, destroyed the whole of the roofs of steadings, throwing away the slates and replacing them with asbestos sheeting. The writer of the letter said that the effect was garish and the policy inexcusable. I cannot find it in me to disagree with him. After all, this roof sheeting is one of the things we all want.
In Scotland we are throwing everything into the housing drive. I wonder whether it is realised what it is costing Scotland in terms of food production. I could give example after example of materials urgently needed for agricultural production which are not obtainable at the present time owing to the fact that they are being diverted to the housing problem. Asbestos sheeting is one of them. Two or three days ago I heard of a case where asbestos sheeting was urgently needed for the re-roofing of farm buildings. The order was placed in November, 1945, and, after 11 months, this material is still not forthcoming. It is estimated that it will not be available for another month or two owing to the heavy demand for the housing programme. Only a few days ago I had a tragic case where asbestos sheeting or some substitute for it was very urgently needed for re-roofing a stable. It has been on order for months, and unless it can be obtained quickly the farmer will have to get rid of his cattle because it is quite impossible in that part of Aberdeenihire to keep them in the open throughout the winter without some sort of cover over their heads.
Another example that I can give concerns a contractor who is doing a lot of work for local authorities. He came to me the other day and said that he could not get hold of fire clay goods, glass, slates, timber, cement, baths and plumbing fittings because they were all in short supply. Yet my hon. Friend the Member for Central Aberdeen (Mr. Spence) has told the House that these materials are being exported. I have some figures concerning these materials. It is remarkable to be told that the housing drive is held up because of a shortage of these materials when in July this year we exported wood and timber to the amount of 608 tons, which is higher than the monthly average for 1938. We exported nearly 28,000 cwts. of tiles. These figures are for July, just one month. We exported 84,707 cwts. of plate and sheet glass, which is far more than we exported in 1938, 5,593 cwts. of electrical ware, 676 tons of door and window frames and 4,135 tons of girders, beams and joists. There are many more, and I could go on reading such lists, but that is the sort of thing which makes one wonder if we deserve to have the houses.
Let me conclude by saying that before the war the number of insured workers in the building and ancillary trades in Scotland was between 60,000 and 70,000. The latest return, for August this year, gives the whole of the labour in the building and civil engineering industries in Scotland as 52,000, and of these less than 30,000 are directly employed on the preparation of sites and the erection of houses. We have been told this afternoon by the Secretary of State that the total labour force is now greater than it was at any time before the war. If that is so—and I do not dispute it—the failure of His Majesty's Government is the greater. In the 10 years before the war with a labour force of between 60,000 and 70,000, we built 20,000 small houses a year. Now after 14 months the total is not 20,000; the total in Scotland is 3,627. I need say no more.

8.34 p.m.

Mr. Willis: I think it is probably a testimony to the work which has been done by my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State that the Opposition today have found it almost impossible to make many constructive criticisms or to offer many helpful suggestions as to how the present rate of building can be increased. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Mr. J. S. C. Reid) told us that he would analyse what he called "this failure"—in fact, I think he called it a bad failure—on the part of the Government. I expected as a result of that analysis that we would find the causes and the remedy. In fact, that is what he told us he was going to do. He proceeded to make the analysis, and the remedy was, "I think you ought to give a bit more freedom to private enterprise."
That was the remedy actually suggested. He found the causes to be that we could not get material, that we could not get the workers in the necessary industries, and he thought this could have been done if private enterprise had had its way. What sort of private enterprise? Obviously, it would have to be a different sort of private enterprise from that which has had its way for decades. If private enterprise could not solve this problem before the war, how is it going to solve it now? If it could not solve it when men and labour were plentiful—in fact, when

men walked the streets, and when it could get all the material it wanted—how is it going to solve it now? We did not get any enlightenment on that point. All we got was an airy wave of the hand, and the suggestion, "I think you should have given private enterprise a little bit more free play." Private enterprise is already being used, and the disappointments which we on this side of the House have suffered have been as the result of private enterprise not being able to fulfil the promises it has made. A promise was made by the Government that we would have some Orlit houses in Edinburgh. They should have been started last October. When the Joint Under-Secretary comes to reply, I would like him to tell us when we will get those Orlit houses. We have had similar promises made. In Edinburgh Swedish timber houses have been held up for lack of certain components. It is not the Government that have not supplied the components, it is private enterprise. Therefore, this argument really does not stand up to very close examination.
The other criticism which we had came from the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart). His contribution was that we could increase the supply of houses if we concentrated on brick houses, because we could build them more quickly. Until we get the skilled workers needed for the production of houses, it is obvious that the course being followed by my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Scottish Office is correct, because we must have houses that can be built with labour other than skilled building trade labour if we are to get the biggest possible number of houses built.
Those are the suggestions that we have heard this afternoon. That is practically all we have had, except for the few suggestions made by the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Aberdeen (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley), with which, I think, we are in general agreement, because we want the indigenous industries of Scotland exploited to their uttermost to contribute towards a solution of this problem. Perhaps the Joint Under-Secretary, when he replies, will give us some information about what is being done in the brick industry, in quarrying, in the cement industry and the slate industry, to encourage them. In Scotland at the present time we have 76,000 men unemployed.


In March, when we debated this question, my hon. Friend the joint Under-Secretary said it was not right that we should have a large army of unemployed while still needing houses. At that time he told us what was being done to train men as builders. Have we yet got sufficient men into the building industry to meet the demands of the building industry over the next 10 or 20 years? There is a big demand. Has any estimate been made of the requirements of the building industry in regard to the number of men that will be wanted in each branch of the industry, and has any plan been made to train those men to take a part in that industry? We want an answer to that, because the Government are responsible for finding employment for these men. We want to see it done in a manner that will contribute towards the reduction of the unemployment problem in Scotland, and at the same time produce the things we require.
It seems to me that when we get down to examine this problem we are brought up against the question of the supplies of raw materials used for the making of certain components, and of the components themselves. I want to ask the Under-Secretary a question here. I understand that there are large quantities of building trade supplies and components being held in store in Scotland by the War Office. I do not know whether that is true, but judging by the reluctance that the War Office has shown to give up camps, I should not be surprised if it is true. I want to know if any steps are being taken to see that there are no large quantities of building trade supplies anywhere held by any Department that are not being used for the purpose of completing or carrying on this programme as rapidly as possible.

Mr. Stephen: Or by private enterprise.

Mr. Willis: Or by private enterprise. I have nothing more to add at the present time. My time is nearly up, and I know that other Members are anxious to take part in the Debate. On the whole, there is no doubt that this Government, up to the present, have clone quite a good job. That does not mean to say that we are satisfied. I can hardly understand how Members below the Gangway opposite can criticise this Government after their

record prior to the war. I can understand Members of this side criticising the Government and prodding them on. but I really cannot understand Members opposite criticising the Government—not, at least, if their minds are on the past. This Government have done a good job up to 1he present; but it is not good enough. We want to make it better. We want an assurance that proper consideration is being given to obtaining the men for the job and to the utilisation of every facility that exists, whether small or large. We had to do that during the war. We have got to do that now, in order to produce the components and requirements of the houses. We want an assurance that a plan is being made for a long term of years—not a mere haphazard sort of arrangement which, one is tempted to think at times exists regarding the supplies of components; but a proper long-term plan. Only in that manner will we get the back of this problem broken within a reasonable time.

8.43 p.m.

Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison: The territory over which this Debate has ranged, a very wide territory which includes some flights of fancy by the hon. Member for Coatbridge (Mrs. Mann), only serves to show how many facets there are to this very complicated question of housing. I should like in the short time at my disposal to try to concentrate on one or two of the aspects and, incidentally, to try to satisfy that long procession of disappointed Members opposite who complained, on seeing their own policy bankrupt of constructive effort, that no one has come along with something with which to help them out. The plaint has been, from one Member after another, that we have nothing constructive to offer. Why have the Government nothing constructive to offer? There has been throughout this Debate implied dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. The Secretary of State at one point said he was not satisfied and that things had not gone as well as he had hoped they would up to the present time, and that he was going to put all that right in the future.

Mr. Westwood: I am really pleased that the hon. and gallant Member has admitted that, because it clears me of the charge of complacency.

Colonel Hutchison: Not altogether, because having admitted that things have not gone very well in the past, the right hon. Gentleman nevertheless pulled himself together and, with an air of benevolence and paternity, assured us that we were all going to be perfectly satisfied in future. I need only ask hon. Members to look at the right hon. Gentleman at the present moment, and they will see how content he is with the general run of things.
I want to try to offer some constructive suggestions, and I beg right hon. and hon. Members opposite to realise that, if the constructive suggestions which come from these benches are ones which they do not like, they are, nevertheless, constructive suggestions. The main constructive suggestion which I have to offer is that they should abandon doctrinaire theory and prejudice against private enterprise—not the private enterprise which they have been trying to discredit all the afternoon, because that is not private enterprise at all. It is no more private enterprise for an Orlit house to be bought by a local authority or by the Government than it is for the Ministry of Civil Aviation to buy a tyre for an aeroplane. I mean competition between men who are not contractors to a local authority or to the Government, free competition between those men or firms to give the country what it wants. That is one constructive suggestion. My second is that there should be more coordination between materials and labour. Finally, I would like to touch upon the question of prices—are we satisfied that all that can be done is being done to keep the prices of house building down?
There has been a great deal of prejudice against private enterprise, and I cannot allow to go unchallenged certain remarks made by the hon. Lady the Member for Coatbridge and the hon. Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. J. L. Williams) in connection with the General Election to the effect that the past record of private enterprise had been one of complete failure. In fact, by the time the war had broken out, only 6 per cent. of the population of this country were living in overcrowded or insanitary conditions, and if the war had not broken out all that would have been removed in a very short time. I would like to bring to the attention of the House the classic example of how doctrinaire theory, cutting out pri-

vate enterprise, has prevented the building of houses. It took place in the city in which I have the honour to represent a Division. In 1935 the Socialists captured a majority on the Glasgow Council—

Mr. McKinlay: The hon. and gallant Gentleman is wrong, it was in 1933, so he is not very accurate.

Colonel Hutchison: I accept that correction; it only emphasises my case. If it was in 1933, they have had control of the Glasgow Corporation for a longer period than I was going to assume. I stood for the Glasgow Council about that time, and I was defeated largely because of the promise made by the Socialist Party that, if they continued in office, they would build in the City of Glasgow 10,000 houses per year. They were continued in office, and the first thing they did was to refuse to allow any private enterprise to build any house whatever, because their conception was that they would implement their promise of 10,000 houses per year by using the doctrinaire methods of direct labour. They failed, and they failed dismally, and not one house was built by private enterprise after they succeeded in office.

Mr. McKinlay: If the hon. and gallant Member will allow me, I want to say that that statement is simply not true, and I was on the housing committee at the time.

Colonel Hutchison: The houses built by private enterprise, according to all the statistics I have seen, were only those started before the Socialists took office, and they were gradually abandoned until none were commenced at all. At any rate, and I think the hon. Gentleman opposite will agree with this, the numbers promised were not achieved, and not half achieved. So the promise upon which they had been elected was a false one, and the martyrdom of the people of Glasgow continued. It is largely due to Socialist ineptitude in the City of Glasgow, and to their hidebound adherence to dogma and doctrine, that the squalid conditions in which so many of my constituents are housed continue today. I believe that the Joint Under-Secretary of State has gone some way to break down this doctrine. He has issued a circular known as 9246, which invites private enterprise builders to become building


contractors—this is not true private enterprise, but it is going somewhere along the line—and to submit tenders to local authorities. I should like to ask him whether he is satisfied that this system is working.

Mr. Buchanan: What is the circular?

Colonel Hutchison: It is a circular which the Secretary of State sent to me himself, advising me that this was a very good system. I have no doubt that when he thinks a little harder he will remember what it is. I should like to ask him whether it is working, because I am informed that it is not. I suggest that he should see to it that it works, and that there should be some appeal for builders to the Department of Health if reasonable contracts are not entertained because Socialist theory thinks it is getting too close to private enterprise or because Moderate theory thinks it will get the houses cheaper later on. The need now is for the production of houses, and nothing should be allowed to stand in the way, whether it be doctrinaire theory from the right or the left. There are many of us who think that coordination between labour and materials is one of the things most identified with the delay in housing.

Mr. Scollan: By private enterprise, does the hon. and gallant Member mean someone who is prepared to build houses without subsidy from the municipality or the Government?

Colonel Hutchison: I am coming to that later on in my speech, because there again I have a constructive suggestion to offer. In the meantime, let us consider coordination. Coordination is an immense task even for a small limited company or private firm, but when the Government enter into control of all the supplies of timber, tiles, pipes, shipping and so on, it becomes a task almost of a brains trust of Solomons. With all the self-assurance that the right hon. Gentleman has, I do not believe that he would arrogate that elevated title for himself. So long as the nation tries to control the immense organisation which is needed for house building we are bound to get a lack of coordination.
I should like to ask what is happening in the case of timber, because timber enters into a, house at many stages. Are we short of timber? Are the 25,000 standards which were the subject of nego-

tiation with Soviet Russia ever going to materialise? What is stopping them coming in, and what is the price to be? What about the timber stocks? There are complaints that the stocks of timber, such as they are. are still being held in remote areas in the centre of the country where they were held for the purposes of security and anti-bombing during the war. Is the Joint Under-Secretary satisfied that the timber which exists is flowing through to the people who need it? They complain that when their stocks are used up it takes a long time to get them replenished, if indeed they do get them replenished. There have been suggestions made to the Minister of Works that the formula for securing arrival of timber is unnecessarily complicated. The timber trade have made suggestions for speeding it up, which would mean less delay and consequently less money. The slow house is a costly house to build.
I would like also to know what has happened to the offer, by British Columbia, of a timber built house for £240 on quay in British Columbia. That price is immensely less than that for a similar house in this country. They offered samples to be shown, but they were tucked away in a corner of Lancashire where they were scarcely visible. What is the prejudice against these houses? I want to suggest that the Government, when buying goods abroad, send out to buy them a person who knows something of what he is buying, somebody who has studied the subject for many years, instead of an official who regards his task as being so much news. Who went to Belgium to buy bricks at 150s. per 1,000 whereas, before the war, the price was 50s. per 1,000 delivered to this country?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works (Mr. Harold Wilson): The officers sent to Belgium were among the leading importers of bricks from that country before the war, and included leading experts in both the building and brick industries.

Colonel Hutchison: I am delighted to hear that some people who knew their job were sent there. But is the hon. Gentleman satisfied that the price of 150s. per 1,000 bricks in Belgium is a reasonable price compared with 50s. per 1,000 delivered, here before the war? There are certain directions in which the costliness of building can be reduced. Is there any


doubt in the Minister's mind about the present high cost of building? It has gone up from 9s. 6d. per superficial foot before the war to 24s. today. If he wants proof that the cost of houses is unnecessarily high may I remind him of a letter I wrote in May, 1946, in which I stated that an eminent firm of house builders in Scotland, a firm which has built more houses to let than any other in the country, offered to build the same type of house, to the same specification and to let at the same rental, as local authority houses, for a subsidy only 77½ per cent. of that which the Minister is now offering to local Authorities, and which subsidy certain Members opposite have said has already shown itself to be inadequate. If you want an acid test that money is being wasted by the present method of building houses, there you have it. There you have a private firm which is prepared to accept whatever rent the local authorities and Government decide, and to supply a similar house for letting with only 77½ per cent. of the subsidy which Members are beginning to claim is too low.
If ever there was proof of waste of money, there it lies. What Government have the right to continue in office and squander the public money in that way? The Government have asked for constructive suggestions. Let them use specialist builders, and take advantage of offers of that kind. Not only will they get houses more quickly, but they will save the nation many thousands of pounds a year. When Governments trade, efficiency becomes the plaything of politics. That is what this country is suffering from now. Our people are shuttlecocks between a series of doctrinaire battledores, and because of that they are sighing and suffering.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Cook: The Government Front Bench has been accused of mis-planning. We at least have a plan, whereas the party opposite have been looking for a policy at Blackpool. It seems almost ludicrous to find the hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) giving a first-class display of misplaced, histrionic ability. We have had nothing this afternoon from the party opposite of a constructive character in relation to this housing problem. I can recall having a debate with the hon and gallant Member for Central Glasgow (Colonel Hutchison) on

another issue, in another place, when he told me that it was not the job of the Opposition to give constructive alternatives, but to destroy the Government's Bills.

Colonel Hutchison: I said that it was not the role of the Government to look to the Opposition for a policy. I never said that the Opposition were out to destroy their plans.

Mr. Cook: I still say that the reply which I got in the Christian Institute, Glasgow, was that it was the job of the Opposition to destroy the Government's Bills, and nothing else.
I want to congratulate the Scottish Office on the progress which they have made in the short time at their disposal. One might almost gather that all the housing problems—upwards of 4,000,000 houses required in this country and 500,000 in Scotland—were a direct result of mismanagement on the part of this Government. So far as I can recall, the party opposite have had at least 25 years to tackle those problems, and we still require 4,000,000 houses in this country. An hon. Member said that they had started a three-prong attack for the abolition of the slums [An HON. MEMBER: "There has been a war."] There has been a war, but never any war on housing until such time as this Government took office. In reply to the criticism made with regard to the Scottish Special Housing Association, I hope that the Secretary of State for Scotland will change it every six months, if it requires it, but, for goodness' sake, let him keep it in operation, because it is doing a first-class job.
I have asked, time after time, what Members opposite mean by free private enterprise. If they mean the building companies, then I am certain my right hon. Friend and the local authorities will give them all the work, and more, that they can tackle I challenge them to deny that their interpretation of free private enterprise means anything other than the building societies, which are very anxious to advance money to propagate the scheme of the so-called propertied class that we heard about from Blackpool. The "four per cent. boys" are hot on the trail for free private enterprise. I hope that the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Undersecretary will see that they do not get the opportunity of exploiting the 4 per cent.


and giving us slums such as we have in King's Park, where they build up church collections for the new poor.
Supplies of electrical goods are very short, but not for the reason that has been attributed. Supplies are coming forward, but the unfortunate thing is that contractors have to go to the small shopkeepers in order to buy switches, cables, plugs, etc. I ask the Minister of Works and the Secretary of State for Scotland to examine where these supplies are going. There is an increase in unemployment in the electrical industry, and we know that supplies are coming through. It is a very sad reflection when we find that reputable contractors, willing and anxious to get on with the housing programme for the Government, are being sabotaged in the way that they, are by Woolworth's and the Clydesdale and others having control of this material.
I wish to put another point with regard to the control of licences. As has been mentioned, pubs particularly seem to be spending their excess profits on repainting outside. Further, I would like to see a stricter control of the supply of licences to such individuals as Lord Kemsley, who has had eight baths installed in a house which has been derequisitioned. If it is possible, I would like to see a grouping of the smaller firms, and to see them supplied by Government Departments with the necessary equipment; we could then get through the smaller firms a great deal of assistance in tackling the housing problem. Too much concentration is going on to the big firms, and the smaller firms are more than anxious to assist in this direction. I have some figures concerning the point which was raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Central Glasgow. When the Socialist Party took office on Glasgow Town Council, they scheduled in Balornock, Houselwood, Berryknowes, Blackhill No. 2, Kelvindale No. 2, and Holmfauldhead approximately 3,000 houses in 1934, 1935 and 1936 for private tender. Taking it by and large, and considering the fact that we had a Socialist local administration trying to operate the awful Acts of a Tory Government, I think it stands to their credit that they achieved such a remarkable programme as that.
It took us five years to gear up production in this country for war, and even then

we were lagging. We find that the party opposite are attempting to make political capital out of the desperate need of the people of this country. They seem to think that a machine which was geared for war production could be immediately changed over and in 13 months geared to produce all the necessary components required for house building. It ill becomes the party opposite to talk in terms of lack of planning when we had the miserable spectacle of the shambles that took place in Blackpool the other week.

9.9 p.m.

Commander Galbraith: I had hoped that this Debate today would have demonstrated the disappointment and the great concern of every Scottish Member at the slow progress which is being made in providing homes for the people of Scotland.

Mr. Rankin: That is your side.

Commander Galbraith: I felt, with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for East Renfrew (Major Lloyd), that the Secretary of State, in the course of his speech, appeared to be somewhat complacent, but I could not help wondering whether he was not just putting the best possible face on a somewhat difficult situation. In any case, he told us very little indeed, and he said very little indeed, about what had happened during the past 13 months, although he painted an exceedingly rosy picture of what was going to happen in the future. Might I just say to the right hon. Gentleman that we cannot judge the housing progress altogether by the number of houses that are planned, or by the number under construction, and that the only true test we can apply to progress lies in the number of houses that are completed. No matter what hon. Gentlemen opposite have said, I believe that in reality there is in their hearts a feeling of disappointment that we have not gone faster than we have. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hillhead (Mr. J. S. C. Reid) dealt with the figures in regard to permanent houses, figures which to my mind are literally appalling. He pointed out that while there were 3,832 houses under construction in July, 1945, only 2,617 permanent houses have been completed in the last 13 months, and I am particularly appalled by reason of an experience which I had recently in Japan.
That country has been devastated to an extent which no one who has not seen it would believe to be possible. There is no industrial area in Japan which has not been absolutely wiped out. Hon. Members may have seen photographs showing the result of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Let me assure them that the devastation wrought there is not one bit worse than that at Tokio, Yokohama, Osaka, and Kobe, the great industrial areas of Japan. One can go for miles along roads where houses and factories used to exist and see nothing but green fields with a chimney sticking up here and there. Japan today is busy on rebuilding houses, shops and factories, but in March of this year the United States occupation forces came to the conclusion that they required 20,000 houses of United States type and design to accommodate the dependants of the soldiers serving in Japan. That programme was initiated in March and commenced in May. Already hundreds of houses are completed and the programme to March next year has been limited by the supreme commander at 10,000 houses. In the meantime the engineer in charge of the project tells me that he could complete many more.

Mr. J. L. Williams: Could the hon. and gallant Gentleman tell the House how, if the Americans are so clever in Japan, it comes about that there is such an enormous housing shortage in America?

Commander Galbraith: I have not visited America and I do not know the figures which the hon. Gentleman has in mind, but I am relating circumstances which have come to my notice and which, I think, place our housing programme in a very bad light. Ten thousand houses to be completed by March next year and every one of them right up to the standard of permanent houses required in this country. I do not know what the explanation as to the slow progress is, nor do I feel that the Secretary of State shed very much light on it during his speech this afternoon, but I am certain that no explanation, whatever it may be, is going to satisfy the people of Scotland that during these past 13 months we have achieved as much as it was possible to achieve. According to old standards the 2,617 houses that have been completed would have been built in 12 months by a labour force of 2,617 men. In July of

1945 we had 3,800 men employed on permanent building and today the figure is 15,900. If we take a rough average through these figures I think we shall come to the conclusion that well over 7,000 houses should have been completed in the period. That that number was not reached may be due to one of two things. Either the materials and components have not been forthcoming, due to a shortage or a lack of organisation, or labour output today is not up to the prewar standard. I confess that I am puzzled over the whole matter. The contradictory statements that we have received from Ministers do not help to clear the situation. Let me give an example of what I mean.
The Joint Under-Secretary of State delivered a broadcast on 8th October. He then spoke of shortages of glass, bricks, electrical fittings and plaster. Today, in "The Times" there is a report that the Minister of Health yesterday made a speech in which he used these words:
It is no use grumbling at the Government. The bricks are on the sites. The materials are there. The contracts have been placed. It is now the job of the builders to build the houses.
From the statement of the Joint Undersecretary it would appear that he blamed shortage of materials From the statement of the Minister of Health it looks as though he places the blame on the building industry.
Is the situation different in Scotland from what it is in England? Are materials available in England and not available in Scotland? If so, may we be told why? I understand that it is the business of the Ministry of Supply to furnish building materials and components in large measure. If that is so, is there a fair distribution? If there is not, how can the Minister of Health say that he has the materials ready on the sites here while the Joint Under-Secretary says that they are not available in Scotland? I noticed one thing upon which both Ministers would appear to agree; that is, that they do not seem to place any blame either upon their own Department or upon any other Government Department. This shortage is a Government responsibility The building programme is the Government's responsibility. It is a responsibility which they have undertaken and in which hitherto, in my belief, they have failed.
I would ask the Joint Under-Secretary to tell us, when he replies, why Scotland should lag behind England. In April, we completed 440 houses in Scotland as against 330 in England. Since then, Scotland has fallen back. In the last three months the average has been about 300 a month while in England the number has risen from 330 to 1,504. Why should England make such a great advance while Scotland has stood still? It is surely not a difficulty of labour shortage. Labour forces have increased in those months, and if it is due to a shortage of materials, which the hon. Gentleman blames, will he tell us who is to blame? From what I know of the hon. Gentleman—and I am not flattering him—I am certain that he has not spared himself to find a solution to this problem. I know another thing about him, which is that he would rather accept the blame himself than place it upon the shoulders of anyone else. I hope that he will be perfectly, and even brutally, frank, if need be, and will tell us where his difficulties lie. I am sure that they are not of his own making.
Several hon. Members have spoken about exports of building materials. I would like to know whether the Secretary of State is satisfied that the building materials which are required by us are not being exported. Have we sufficient ranges, stoves, electrical equipment, sanitary ware, and metal doors—I think he said today that he had not sufficient metal doors and window frames—and asbestos goods? If we have not those things, and are short of them, it seems to me that the Government stand condemned. We are exporting, certainly in the case of electrical goods alone, twice as much as we exported in 1938.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply (Mr. Woodburn): We must pay for our food.

Commander Galbraith: We pay for our food by exports, certainly, but the needs of our people have to be weighed up, the one against the other. It might be found that other goods might be exported to fill the gap. I would like to know whether the Secretary of State is aware of these things, and if he is, what representations he has made to the Board of Trade. Or is this another example of the Labour Government's coordinated plan? The permanent housing programme has been

a disappointment, and so also has the temporary housing programme. The Government received 12,700 sites and 14,700 layout plans when they came into office. In spite of that, they have completed only 6,100 houses up to the end of August. I do not know that the blame lies on the Scottish Office. After all, they provided the sites and the layout plans have been approved, and it seems to me that the Ministry of Works has fallen down on the job of erecting the houses. I noted particularly the statement made by the hon. Member for Rothwell (Mr. T. J. Brooks) about the Ministry of Works, and it seems that the Undersecretary himself is not too well satisfied about them if what appeared in this document is correct—the Labour Press Service of 9th October, 1946—in regard to temporary houses. The Under-Secretary seemingly has this to say:
Let me say a word about the temporary housing programme. Here there have been constant delays and production difficulties and we might well have been tempted to cancel our programme and concentrate on permanent houses.
It seems from that that it would be a good thing if the Ministry of Works took some steps to put their house in order so far as Scotland is concerned. Here again in the matter of temporary houses Scotland is lagging behind. We had an allocation of 34,300—

Mr. Buchanan: 32,300.

Commander Galbraith: Thirty-two thousand three hundred as against 130,800 houses for England. Eighteen per cent. of the Scottish allocation has been completed as against 31 per cent. in respect of England. Why is it that the Scottish situation should be worse than in England? Is the Ministry of Works not paying the same attention to work in Scotland as it is in England? After all, I have always understood that the housing situation in Scotland was considerably worse than that in England and that it was the intention of the Government to give Scotland a priority so far as that was concerned. The Ministry of Works should see that Scotland at least gets an equal share with England.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hillhead and several other hon. Members referred to the lack of progress with the non-traditional houses. It is deplorably slow particularly in regard


to the Swedish houses. As far as I can discover, 2,500 were in this country last February and 1,440 of them were under construction, yet up to the time of the last report, 108 had been completed. I understand that these houses are simple to erect and that they can be speedily erected. I do not know why more of them have not been completed. I think the Secretary of State suggested that it was due to the lack of components, but that difficulty should have been overcome by now.
I was very glad indeed to hear the right hon. Gentleman say that he was paying attention to the rural housing problem and that he was not concentrating entirely on urban housing. The situation in the rural areas is every bit as serious as it is in the towns, and indeed the effect of bad housing in the rural areas may have a more serious economic effect than anything that is happening in the towns. Agriculture is held up today because of the shortage of housing, and what is going to happen when the prisoner of war labour is withdrawn it is difficult to predict. Unless housing accommodation which will attract men to the land is provided, we must look for a very large fall indeed in our agricultural production. Houses that will attract men do not exist in the countryside today.
Reconditioning would go a very long way towards solving the problem, but whether or not the Minister has powers to recondition no doubt he will tell us. If not, I should like to know what steps he proposes to take to deal with what is an urgent and vital situation. I hope, indeed I am sure, that neither the Secretary of State nor the Under-Secretary imagines that the building of houses in villages will solve this problem. If he does think that, I suggest he takes an hour's walk round any agricultural community and I am certain he will be satisfied that the problem will not be solved in that way. We must have better housing on the farms themselves, and if he has not powers to recondition existing houses, then the sooner he starts building houses on the farms, the better for all concerned. However, new houses alone will not solve the problem of the countryside in time.
The Secretary of State told us today that 143 camps had been taken over by squatters and that these camps now

house 6,800 people. Might I have the attention of the Under-Secretary for a moment, because I would like him to reply to this question: What steps were taken by the Scottish Office in an endeavour to get these camps from whomsoever was in possession of them prior to the squatters taking over? It seems to me that a far stricter and sterner line has to be taken with Government Departments which are holding on to accommodation such as that, and who are also holding on, as the hon. and gallant Member for West Edinburgh (Lieut.-Commander Hutchison) said, to buildings which could be transformed into good housing property. Many of these Departments— and the fighting services are the worst of the lot—are holding on to property today which they do not need and never will need again, and yet they will not get out. The sooner the Secretary of State takes stern measures with them, the better for us all. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will answer the question put to him by the hon. and gallant Member for East Renfrew, on whom will the cost of these camps fall?
The progress of the building programme has to my mind been highly disappointing, and the situation is not improved when the Secretary of State tells us that he has no apologies to make, that he is doing a magnificent job under most difficult conditions. Well, if less than 10,000 houses in 13 months is a magnificent job, words do not mean the same to me, or to many of the people of Scotland, as they do to the right hon. Gentleman. The truth is that in the last 13 months the Government have failed to live up to their promises, they have failed to deliver the goods. No matter what the cause may be, that failure is a Government responsibility, and I can only express the hope which I have myself, and which I put forth as the hope of those who sit on the benches behind me, that in the interests of this country during the next 12 months the Government may redeem its past failures, and that the rosy picture which the Secretary of State painted for us today as to the future may indeed become a reality.

9.29 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Buchanan): We have had a very important Debate today. It has been not merely a Scottish Debate because, even when I sat on the back


benches, I always thought it was a mistake merely to treat a housing Debate on Scotland as merely a Scottish Debate. The welfare of housing in Scotland affects this country as a whole, and I have constantly thought that it might be better for us all if in these Debates affecting our country we could broaden them and bring within them other people besides the Members from our own particular country. The Debate is an important one. Many things have been said about me which seemed rather hard, or about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, but no one has any right to complain, either of the tone or tenor of the Debate. I would be the last to complain. As to complacency, I do not know how other people are constituted, or whether I will ever make a good Minister, but far be it from me to be complacent. I worry about this morning noon and night; who could help but worry? Even if the figures were far better, I would still be anxious and annoyed and would wonder what the result would be. Far from being complacent, easy going and bright, I tend the other way. No matter how things are going, I constantly tend to be rather pessimistic about the position.
There was some dispute between the right hon. and learned Member for Hill-head (Mr. J. S. C. Reid) and the Secretary of State for Scotland about a statement made by the Secretary of State, or alleged to have been made, at a Press conference. In the hand-out at that Press conference, the words used were—
Twenty thousand built or building.
Those are the actual words. It may well be that someone ought to have corrected the statement in the Press. I have the document here, addressed from St. Andrew's House and headed:
Call for present housing drive. Secretary of State's message to local authorities.

Lord William Scott: What is the date?

Mr. Buchanan: The date is 20th August. The relative passage is as follows:
It is essential that the fullest advantage should now be taken of these preparations of the Government's progress so that we will have at least 20,000 houses built or building in Scotland by the middle of next year.

Mr. J. S. C. Reid: May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether the words which appear to have been used by the "Glas-

gow Herald" have no authorisation at all:
quite confident that Scotland would be in possession of 20,000 permanent new houses within the next 12 months?

Mr. Buchanan: I cannot say. I have here the actual hand-out, and if he likes, the right hon. and learned Member can have a look at it.
I will admit that I have now become unduly cautious. I am almost frightened to say anything because no matter what one says it is bound to be wrong. For instance, on the Scottish Housing Bill which dealt with the subsidy, the right hon. and learned Member for Hillhead pressed on me with great force the need for alternative methods of housing. He asked me to make steel available, but now I am attacked and told to leave these things alone and get on with brick building. If we get on with brick building, they go for us for not using steel. Those who form the Opposition, if they mean to form a Government, might at least agree on policy. The hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) with that great gusto which I have always envied— in fact, if I had one-half of it, with my natural debating ability, I might have been a statesman—comes in, sticks out his chest, and says "I told you to take this line to speed up building in Fife. But," he says, "ultimately you take it and meet my wish. You are forced to do it."
May I make two confessions? One is that there is this difference between me and a very great friend of the hon. Member's who held Cabinet rank, and who was the Leader of his party—that at least at one time I could be forced to do something and that he was a long time in office and no one could force him to anything. That at least is an improvement, I say to the hon. Member that although I could have done all that Fife was asking for, we do not want merely tenders on paper; we want much more to have houses translated into the reality of building. All that Fife was pressing me for was more tenders on paper, the right to get more houses passed for tender. Frankly, I have reached the stage, and I had reached it then, when with the material and labour available in Scotland I have got practically all the tenders I need. We have now got tenders from every county council in Scotland. We have got tenders from 95 per cent. of the local authorities; the


other 5 per cent. include the local authorities which are the smallest in size and comprise less than 1 per cent. of the population. The tenders which the hon. Member for East Fife was pressing me about are not my problem. The problem now is to correlate the tenders we have got and to make them a reality—getting the houses tackled and built and then completed. That is our problem. That is why I said to the hon. Member on the matter of Fife that if it pleased them I could do as they wished but that in relation to the real programme it mattered little.
I have been tackled about many issues in this Debate. May I say a word about the camps, an issue which was raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith)? May I repeat what I said when I met local authorities in Scotland on the matter? If the camp is for a short term, say a period of less than two years, in other words, if it is pretty bad and would be difficult to make semi-permanent, or even equal to a temporary house, the whole cost falls on the State. That relates to the great bulk of the camps—an overwhelming number. There the State meets the cost, but if it is a camp about which, after review and proper survey by the local authority and us, we come to the conclusion that it can be made into the equal of a temporary house, the matter proceeds on the same basis of finance as does a temporary house.

Major Lloyd: Would the hon. Member excuse me intervening, as this is a point in which I am interested? I accept the point of view about the expense of altering or improving the structure of the house, but what about the actual week to week administration, such as the sanitary arrangements?

Mr. Buchanan: I think that the local authority must pay a sum. The hon. and gallant Member talks about Glasgow people going into East Renfrew. I remember that I once sat with a distinguished Member from the other side of the House on the problem of shifting population from place to place under the Poor Law. This business of trying to keep people in an area in relationship to a border will not work. While Renfrew may get a few people from Glasgow it

will probably be balanced in the long run by people coming from Renfrew to Glasgow. We have enough trouble in running the borders of the world. Do not let our borders in Scotland become too parochial and narrow.
I wish to speak about a number of other matters. The question has been raised about the supply of materials, timber, glass and other necessaries. I cannot, and really hon. Members must not expect me to defend speeches made even by Members of the Government when they are suddenly flung at me. I have enough to do to defend my own. This speech which was quoted was made last night. Really, I did not know about that speech until I heard about it this evening. All that I can express is my own view and that is all I will take responsibility for. There is an improvement in the position. Take, for example, the position when I broadcast at the beginning of August. In the preceding month the supply of bricks was not good. The month of July had passed and I was worried. Production in July was less than 30,000,000 bricks. That was not enough. I do not think the broadcast did it, and I would be the last person to claim that, but the fact was that at the end of August production rose to 45,000,000 which, while not wholly solving the position, combined with the importation of English and Belgian bricks, went largely to meet the position. Bricks are not now the anxiety which they were formerly. To say that the position was eased and solved absolutely would be nonsense. What I say is that there are enough bricks at the moment to carry on that particular job.
Let me discuss the position with regard to other components. At all the meetings I attend with my English colleagues I hear the grumble that Scotland is getting more than her share. One of our chief shortages is of plaster and plaster board. May I say I have no doctrinaire views? I was so anxious that I went to a Conservative Member about it. I hope the Tory caucus will not meet and discipline these people to whom I talk. I went to a Conservative Member from Northern Ireland and asked him whether he could get me plaster from Northern Ireland. He entered into negotiations, but owing to developments in Northern Ireland and the requirements there we


were not able to get what we needed. I still have the hopes—

Major Haughton: I did my very best.

Mr. Buchanan: I was going to say that the hon. and gallant Member did his very best. I am hopeful that the best may have a good effect. In regard to plaster production, I brought here last night the chairman of what I think is one of the biggest companies operating in Britain. He told me that, whatever grumbles there may be, the Scottish allocation of plaster was much above that for the country South of the Border.
I now refer to the question mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member for Pollok, the allocation of temporary houses. He said that it appeared that more temporary houses were being supplied to England than to Scotland. The answer is that this Government, and indeed the Government of which he was a Member, properly decided that in the allocation of the early temporary houses the bombed out districts must have preference. That is what was decided. If one takes away the bombed districts such as London, Portsmouth, et cetera, and considers the parts of England which have not been bombed, it will be found that Scotland is far ahead of them. Who will deny that that policy was right? I hope we shall not take the line in this House that because people who are bombed are across the Border we have not to assist them. I would refuse to take that line, and I hope nobody else will. The facts are that, if we take the bombed parts of the country out of the English figures—that is, London, and such places as Portsmouth and Plymouth, and I say that it is good Socialist doctrine to help them—and you come to other parts of the country, like the North-East Coast and parts of Lancashire, which were not so badly hit, our Scottish figures are far ahead. That is the answer.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: Before the hon. Gentleman passes from materials, may I point out that he has not answered my question? I quoted the words of a Cabinet Minister, who declared that in England the materials are there. My question was: "If that is so, why are they not in Scotland?"

Mr. Duchanan: The hon. Member made a quotation from the speech of a Cabinet

Minister which was made last night. I must ask the Cabinet Minister if he really said that. Surely, the hon. Member would at least grant me the right to go to the man and say, "Did you say it?" I do not know exactly what was the context or its meaning. The hon. Member for East Fife knows very well that one can take a little bit out of a speech and alter its whole meaning. I do not know what was meant, but what I say about materials is that we have enough to speed it up, though there have been shortages in certain respects.
I was asked by the hon. Member for North Edinburgh (Mr. Willis) about rainwater goods. I have never been fully satisfied about that. One of the reasons for the difficulty is that it is a section of the industry which was most unpopular. It was dirty, hard work and not highly remunerated in the old days. We have had meetings with the union and employers, and, indeed, I am meeting the employers again on Friday next. We have got the union to agree to an upgrading scheme to allow more labourers in the foundries to move up to semi-skilled and even to become skilled men so as to add to the labour force in the foundries. I have met employers in places like Barr-head and Falkirk and they are now equipped with the latest and most modern machinery so as to increase production in Scotland. Anybody who knows the position will understand that these matters take time and experience, and, in the matter of rainwater goods, certain types which we have examined have not turned out a success. We have spent some time on a specific alternative, which we had sent up from England but which, for certain reasons, proved defective. I am sorry it occupied a lot of time, but we had to try it. We are now using, as an alternative to some extent, an aluminium gutter.
May I say a word or two about the aluminium house? On the temporary housing programme, I say frankly that I thought we would have been further ahead than we are, but that is not due to the Ministry of Works alone. Scotland was allocated 32,000 temporary houses, and of that number 12,000 were aluminium—two-fifths of the total. The aluminium house is a factory-produced house, and. in my view, apart from the Weir house, undoubtedly the nearest to prefabrication that you can get. It is


made in a factory at Dumbarton, where men and women are engaged upon it, and I have visited that factory. The firm, with the best will in the world, thought they would have been able by this time to have given us a figure much in excess of the 102 which they delivered last week. They have been faced with shortages of machine tools and the non-delivery of cranes. Before the contract was taken over they placed an order for cranes which have not yet been delivered. No Government controls intervened and, with every kind of priority given to them, the full complement of cranes ordered has not been received. They want tippers for cement, and they have to compete with the building trade contractors. On the whole they have made progress, but not the progress which they and I thought they would have made.
In these days when so many people seek to depreciate Scotland, let me say that I have seen the factory at Blackburn and seen the men and women at work, and also the management. I was proud of my fellow countrymen in that part of the world after I saw their production. They were doing an excellent job. That is also the answer with regard to Crail. May I say to the hon. Member for East Fife that I said to my officials who allocate the aluminium houses, "You allocate them because if I do so it may be that I shall be accused of giving Socialist town councils preference over some others. You are likely to be as fair as anybody. You have no political sympathies that I know of. Go and do the job fairly and decently. Do it well and I will not interfere with your work." Crail was put on that list, and I understand they have been supplied with the houses, although I am not certain. If it is any consolation to the hon. Member for East Fife, I will say quite frankly that I do not propose to alter the procedure with regard to the allocation of the aluminium houses made by my officials from whatever part of the House I may be attacked.
Let me say a word or two about the Special Housing Association. It has come in for a certain amount of criticism, and it may be as well if I give a little of its history. I inherited it, as did my predecessor. The right hon. and learned Member for Hillhead inherited it. It dates back to a purely Conservative Gov-

ernment. That fact should be a great inspiration to the hon and gallant Member for Central Glasgow (Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison) because the Tory Party could do no wrong. There was not even a National Liberal in that Government. The Association has had a rather chequered career. During the war it was given other work to do. When I entered office there were two lines I could take: one was to abolish it and the other was to try, by trial and error, to make it a workmanlike body. Supposing I had come to this House and said I was abolishing it, what would have been said? I would have been attacked. I took the right and proper course of keeping it in being and seeing if I could improve it. I set out to improve the membership of the Board by various methods. I was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbartonshire (Mr. McKinlay) why certain members had been asked to retire. I thought that, in a Board charged with this great task, we ought to try out some younger men, men who I thought would be able to devote their time to it. I have appointed them. I do not say that I have got rid of my troubles yet—far from it—but I do say that I have now got a number of men drawn from many walks of life. This week I have started on a new road, with a new experiment. I will not say that it will be successful, but neither will I say that it will fail. All I will say is that I will try experiment after experiment, and I hope that one day I will get a solution to the housing problem in Scotland.
I wish to say a few words on the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbartonshire concerning technicians. He complained that we were going to pay these people a salary higher than is paid by local authorities. I hope we will never reach the stage when, because a local authority pays a certain salary, we regard that as the right salary. Surely, we have not reached that stage yet. This body is a semi-government body. It is not part of the Civil Service, but it is related to it in some ways. In fixing the salaries we took more or less the salary that would apply to the same status in the Civil Service. If this body is to succeed, as I trust it will, we must attract the very best type of men in the various professions in order that it shall be given every chance.
With regard to the figures for the construction of houses, we have had a good deal of criticism. I would like to have seen the figures much higher. I was asked by the right hon. and learned Member for Hillhead about the "Finish the houses" campaign. We do not intend to let it interfere with the present building arrangements. All we are proposing is to have a businesslike arrangement to deal with those houses which are nearly finished. With reference to the Swedish houses, so far as the Government supplied parts are concerned, everything has been supplied. The only parts that are missing in the Swedish houses are those that are supplied by the private merchant to the local authority. For the sake of getting a house let quickly, and getting people into shelter, why should we not take an extra step if we possibly can and have the job finished at once? That is all we are proposing. Many figures have been quoted, but I would like to refer to the case of the town of Clydebank. Up till 2nd October, we have built 8,500-odd temporary houses and 3,600-odd permanent houses, a grand total of over 12,000. I was looking at the figures for the year 1912, when private enterprise was responsible for all the building in the country, and they never came near the figure that I have just quoted. Even in 1930, 1931 and 1932, when bricklayers and material were 10 a 1d., the total production of houses in Scotland reached a total of only 20,000. Here am I, shortly after the war, when I have had to build up a labour force, and I have already reached that total.
Take the town of Clydebank for example. There are four towns in Scotland that were badly bombed. They are Greenock, Clydebank, Aberdeen and Dumbarton. Clydebank is usually accepted as the worst bombed. Between the wars Clydebank built 2,200-odd houses. That was the total number built, taking into account private enterprise and everything.

Mr. J. S. C. Reid: Permanent houses?

Mr. Buchanan: Permanent houses. That was their total. Today, at the end of 13 months, they have completed in temporary and permanent houses, and have in the course of construction, almost as many as were built in the 20 years between the two wars. That is Clydebank.
I say quite frankly, while those figures move we have been disappointed. I can assure this House that I will work, and work, and work at anything. including private enterprise. Why do hon. Members opposite never show any generosity in their character? It amazes me. Take for example, the hon. and gallant Member for Central Glasgow. He knows I went to the Glasgow Town Council. That is something hon. Gentlemen opposite would never have done, because I have seen predecessors of mine who were afraid to look at Glasgow. I met the Glasgow Town Council, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Carmichael) knows, and asked them to adopt private enterprise, and today the biggest contracts placed in the hands of private enterprise have been placed by the City of Glasgow Corporation. I have no prejudices or feelings in this matter. However much we may differ, I only hope this Debate will result in a combined effort to make Scottish housing progress speedier and faster towards its ultimate solution.

It being Ten o'Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

CHEESE RATION (HEAVY WORKERS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."— [Mr. Joseph Henderson.]

10.1 p.m.

Mr. C. S. Taylor: This evening I wish to raise the question of an extra cheese ration for certain classes of workers. I am rather distressed that the hon. Member for Upton (Mr. A. Lewis) is not present, because I think perhaps he might be doing greater service to the community and to the country if he were not trying to organise hotel workers into unions to which they do not wish to go, but rather organising "cheese unions" to combat the cheeseparers—I refer to the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food. On 24th June this year I addressed a letter to the hon. Lady in which I drew particular attention to the case of a constituent of mine who was a gas worker employed by the local gas company. I wrote to the hon. Lady as follows:


He is a district foreman and has six other men working under him. He asks on behalf of the party whether they can be allowed an extra cheese ration. He states that he often eats nothing at mid-day but dry bread as there are no British restaurants near his work. He points out that men employed on water work near his gang get extra cheese, tea and sugar.
On 5th July I received a reply from the hon. Lady through a Parliamentary Private Secretary saying:
When deciding which categories of workers should be allowed extra cheese, we are guided by recommendations made to us by an advisory committee of the T.U.C. This committee take into account the conditions of work in an industry as a whole, and they have not recommended that extra cheese should be allowed to the workers employed in the gas industry.
I am sorry to give these long quotations from letters, but they are very material to my argument.
We have given special encouragement to employers to set up canteens where workers can obtain satisfactory meals, and whilst I appreciate that it would not be possible for this man and his colleagues to use a canteen at the company's works, it would, I suggest, be possible for the company to extend any canteen arrangements which are provided at the works to enable those of their workers employed in open country to have a packed cold meal supplied to them on the job.
On 17th July I wrote a letter to the hon. Lady in which I said:
I understand that in the case of this man and similar workers a canteen would be useless, as they go straight from their own homes to their jobs and do not go to the gas works first.
I received a further reply from the hon. Lady which said:
Surely, if a canteen is to be provided for gas stokers it would be possible for the company to arrange for packed meals to be sent to employees working elsewhere.
For one reason or another the gas company have not even been able to provide a canteen for the gas stokers. Whether it is their fault or not, the men who are working as gas stokers in intense heat— I have been down to see them, and I know the heat in which they work, and I have see the arduous labour which they perform—do deserve extra rations for the arduous task they have to perform. But apart from the gas stokers there are those who lay the gas mains. Why does the hon. Lady resist the giving of an extra cheese ration to the gas main layers? After all, it is a little hard to suggest to the layer of the gas main, who leaves his

home early in the morning, that the company should provide a sort of mobile canteen service to go all over the place to feed him.
There are many cases of workers who should be entitled to an extra cheese ration. Many workers, for one reason or another, are denied canteen facilities, and I feel that those workers merit the sympathetic consideration of the Minister. For example, I heard the other day of a gardener who works for an employer on the employer's estate. He is fortunate: he has a cottage; he has an agricultural worker's card because he is producing food. His cottage is within 100 yards of where he works. He gets an extra cheese ration, but the gravedigger—and I do not want anybody to laugh about the grave-digger, although his job may be less productive than that of the gardener—who works in a rural area, where the cemetery may be miles away from any restaurant or any canteen, gets no extra cheese ration at all. As I have tried to explain, the workers who lay water pipes or, indeed, men engaged on rural and county road work, get their extra cheese ration; but the workers engaged next door, almost alongside the water workers, those men engaged on laying gas mains, get no extra cheese ration whatsoever.
I should like to refer to a Question which was raised by the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Perkin) on 31st July this year and the answer given to him about the gas main layers, which was as follows:
The special cheese ration is allowed for employees of waterworks undertakings who are unable to take advantage of canteens or other catering facilities. Workers employed on the laying of gas mains are only intermittently and for comparatively short periods working on sites which are remote from all catering facilities and I regret that I should not feel justified in extending the grant of a special ration to them."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st July, 1946; Vol. 426, c. 192]
So, according to the Minister's ruling, these workers laying gas mains, for whom no catering facilities are available, however short or however long the period during which they may be working on the job, get no extra ration whatsoever, and have to rely upon dry bread. These men go out early in the morning and arrive home late in the evening. Unless they have sufficient points food to put between their bread they have to rely upon dry bread. As far as the inter-


mittent nature of their work is concerned —and "intermittent" is the word used in the answer—it is interesting to see that hop-pickers, who only work for a very short period in the year on that particular job, get extra cheese. So too do scavengers—I am not quite sure what scavengers are, but they do—so do land drainage workers, so do Women's Land Army trainees. They all get an extra cheese ration, but the gas main layer does not. I am told by my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford University (Sir A. Herbert) that men who work on canals do not get an extra cheese ration. Surely, those who work on canals cannot often be near a British restaurant in their work?
Again, when we are sadly in need of houses, especially in the rural areas, and when one would have thought that those engaged on building in the country districts would have been given every possible consideration, it is curious to find that workers engaged on building houses in the rural areas do not get an extra cheese ration. They again may be many miles from a restaurant or canteen, but they get no extra cheese ration. It seems curious, because the miners are to get extra meat. I am perfectly certain that many hon. Members opposite—if there were many hon. Members opposite—and hon. Members on this side who are interested in coal, have been down coal mines and have been to the canteens afterwards. The canteens at coal mines are magnificent—absolutely first class. You will get a better meal at a canteen in a coal mine than, in spite of the hon. Member for Upton, you will get at the Ritz or the Dorchester or anywhere else. [An HON. MEMBER: "Don't you believe it."] Yes, certainly, you will see there things which you will not get at the most expensive— I will not say the best—London hotel. It seems curious that these people should be given an extra meat ration when the various categories I have mentioned tonight do not get an extra cheese ration.
There is one other case I should mention of another constituent of mine about whom I wrote to the hon. Lady. This constituent was employed by his mother as head cowman. He worked on a small farm and lived some considerable distance from it. The permanent staff on this farm numbered three. He had to leave to get to his work at 6 o'clock in the morning. He had to take with him three packed meals, and that means a great

deal, as the hon. Lady will know. He did not return until dark. He could not get the extra cheese ration, and I wrote to the hon. Lady and said that an agricultural worker was entitled to an extra. cheese ration, but this man, simply because he was employed by his mother, and in spite of the fact that he was doing just as much work as any other agricultural worker, was not entitled to the cheese ration. The hon. Lady wrote to me saying:
The claims of farmers and their relatives to a special cheese ration have been: carefully considered, but as these people can usually arrange to return home for a mid-day meal we do not feel justified in giving them a special cheese ration.
Why should this man, an ordinary agricultural labourer, who lives miles away from the farm where he works and is unable to get home for his midday meal, be treated differently from any other agricultural labourer? My constituent, very disillusioned and discouraged by the Minister's reply, wrote as follows:
Obviously the Minister of Food takes a line of least resistance by taking my plea as a personal one. I gave my own case as merely typical of a great number. It seems a case of every man for himself with the possible aid of the black market, the sole alternative being to use up the ration of the remainder of the family while they go without. I would point out to the Minister of Food that the population of the country is made up of individuals—
I underline the word "individual"—
and they have failed in their duty so long as any appreciable number of these are being unfairly served. If it should be necessary for you to answer their letter, tell them from me. Thank you for nothing and convey my sincere hopes that they may eventually recover from the mess they have landed themselves and the country in.
He states in a P.S.:
Have you a good recipe for cheese making? I could possibly pinch some milk.
The unfair restrictions which have been imposed on individuals and on many workers in many industries are leading to breaches in the law. We all know that if there are wholesale breaches in the law there must be something wrong with the law. If there are large-scale breaches of the law, then there must be something which is pretty unfair and unsound. I submit that by their regulations and restrictions the Ministry are causing hundreds of thousands of people to go into the black market, and causing hundreds of thousands of people to break the law. Surely it is possible for the Ministry of


Food to treat these individual cases on their merits. Why should you take your orders from the T.U.C.? Why should you rely on a sub-committee of the T.U.C. to say who needs an extra cheese ration? Why should you not justify yourself and say that such and such a man deserves a cheese ration, and we will judge the case on its merits? Goodness knows you have enough bodies in the Ministry of Food who can judge these matters. Surely you have enough bodies in the regions and at headquarters? Surely you have enough people in the Ministry of Food?

Mr. Speaker: If I may interrupt the hon. Member—no people at all. The hon. Member said "You," and that means me.

Mr. Taylor: I am sorry, Sir; I got carried away by my enthusiasm. I mean that the Ministry of Food have sufficient bodies under their control to carry out cheese rationing on their own, so that they can decide on the merits of each individual case if necessary. There may be occasions when the individual does matter; he may not be a member of a class or group. He must be considered on his own. Tonight, I ask the Minister of Food to consider the special cases, particularly those I have mentioned—gasworkers, agricultural workers, agricultural housing workers, and last, but not least, grave diggers.

10.21 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food (Dr. Edith Summer-skill): I welcome the opportunity which the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr C. S- Taylor) has given me of explaining the principles which govern the policy which we pursue in granting this special cheese ration. The hon. Member has left me only nine minutes in which to reply, and I shall be unable to go into details of the grave diggers and other categories of workers he has mentioned. But if he will follow me carefully I think he will find that our approach to this question is practical and sensible, and one which in the end can be administered.
We realised, when we introduced the rationing of cheese in 1941, that there were certain categories of workers who always had to take a packed meal to work, and we decided that those workers

whose employers were unable to provide them with a meal at their work, and workers who were unable to use ordinary canteen facilities or were unable to get a packed meal, must have an extra cheese ration. It was made clear at the beginning, however, that this ration was in no sense a supplementary ration given to any category of workers on account of the heavy nature of their work. I am glad that the hon. Member has not pleaded for an extra ration on those grounds. We have tried to avoid, so far as possible, any differential rationing. This extra ration has been, and is, a makeshift substitute for a meal May I deal first of all with procedure? The hon. Gentleman rather ridiculed the committee of the T.U.C. He asked why the Ministry themselves could not make their own decisions. Well, the T.U.C. represents organised workers, and the hon Gentleman himself mentioned many categories of workers. Does he say that he is more fitted to say what those workers need than the workers' representatives?

Mr. Taylor: I say that the workers are more fitted than the T.U.C.

Dr. Summerskill: The T.U.C. represents the workers. The workers are the T.U.C, and the Ministry, anxious to be democratic, invited the workers to examine conditions, such as the hon. Member has described. They invited men and women who felt they should be given this extra cheese ration to make their application to the T.U.C. and the T.U.C, through the Rationing and Prices Committee of the Joint Council, act in cooperation with the Ministry of Food in examining the applications. Every month or six weeks—whenever it is necessary—this committee meets the Ministry and goes very carefully into all the questions which have been raised by the hon. Member: where men work, how they work, what catering facilities are available, and so on, and they then advise the Ministry of Food. I do not believe that this House will say that the Ministry of Food should override the recommendations of the workers' representatives

Mr. E. P. Smith: If that is so, why is the country builder, who is doing work on rural buildings, regarded as quite distinct from the urban builder? Why is he not being allowed an extra ration?

Dr. Summerskill: There is one difficulty so far as builders are concerned. It is very necessary under this scheme that the Ministry of Food and the local committees who finally administer it should be able to identify the worker. So far a agricultural workers are concerned, as the hon. Member knows, they have a special insurance card and therefore it is easy to identify them. It is a little difficult to identify the building worker and this is one difficulty which we find is hard to overcome, but apart from that I can assure the hon. Member that their application is carefully considered.
In the five minutes which I have left to me I will try to explain why certain categories have never been given a special ration. In order to qualify, the hon. Gentleman is quite right when he says that the work must be continuous and not intermittent. We have had to decide that because it is very difficult to administer a scheme which is only operating for men or women working for a very short period.

Mr. Taylor: What about the hop pickers?

Dr. Summerskill: They come in a different category. The hop pickers are being bracketed with the harvest workers. They are getting extra food during a special period, and there again it is intermittent. There are borderline cases, but you must draw the line somewhere. On one side of that line, there are some people who are lucky and get the extra ration, and, on the other side, there are a few who are unlucky The hon. Member has quoted a few of the latter. We have had to maintain that borderline very strictly. It would be administratively impossible to introduce a system of examining individual applicants. The hon. Member asked why the Ministry of Food cannot examine every individual application. Such a suggestion is frivolous.

Mr. Taylor: I never said that. I said examine a group or class, and perhaps, if there are any, examine individual cases.

Dr. Surmnerskill: A group may be live people or four people. To examine each group would be quite impossible. You would have hundreds of men going to their local food offices to have their cases examined, and such an approach would be impossible, in these days, when local food offices are already overwhelmed with work. It is also necessary to maintain uniformity of treatment throughout the country. If we followed the hon. Gentleman's suggestion, and the Eastbourne Food Committee decided to grant this special cheese ration to a certain group, and a food committee in the North of England decided that a group doing the same work, under the same conditions, should not have it, then, of course, there would be difficulties between the workers.
Finally, I must remind the hon. Member of this very important fact: We are conscious, all the time, that the supply of cheese is very short. It must be remembered that the amount of cheese required to meet the special cheese ration is the equivalent of approximately five million ordinary consumer rations of cheese. It will be appreciated that the present system of the careful scrutiny of claims by the T.U.C. and the Ministry ensures that the demand for extra cheese can be controlled. If we widened the scope, this could only be done at the expense of ordinary domestic consumers. I feel—and I am sure the House will agree with me—that we must recognise that the ordinary domestic consumers have a right to their present rations, and we are trying to ensure that in exactly the same way as we are trying to ensure that every worker is treated equitably.

It being Hall past Ten o'Clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.